Citrus Bars

These are fantastic!  Not much of a lemon bar fan?  Give these a go.

The crust is simple and is made with the delightful addition of wheat germ.  Confectioners sugar keeps it light and sweet.

Cold butter is cut in with a pastry blender.  I find cutting a whole bar of butter (cold!) into thirds lengthwise and then flipping it and cutting into thirds again lengthwise before cutting it into tablespoons helps make quick work of working it in to the dry ingredients.  Does that make any sense at all?  Perhaps a blurry photo will help?

The crust mixture is pressed on the bottom and up the sides of an ungreased, unlined baking pan.  I know!  I was worried too, but fret not, the bars will come out without incident.

These bars are made with limes in addition to the lemon.  Both fruits are zested and juiced.  This is one of my favorite things to do in baking – zesting citrus fruit.  The smell, of course, is lovely but I also like the look of the zest, watching the almost imperceptible sprays of juice explode from the peel, and hearing the “zwith, zwith, zwith” sound the fruit makes against the microplane.

The juice and zest are combined with eggs, sugar, and some flour.

This is poured over the crust, which has already baked and cooled.

The filling then bakes… and cools…

And the top is sprinkled with confectioners sugar before the bars are sliced and removed from the pan.  I had a little trouble getting clean slices – wiping off the knife completely in between cuts with a warm, damp towel helped immensely.

The flavor is very subtle but still has that lemony tang.  The crisp, tender crust provides most of the sweetness and is a perfect match for the creamy, tart filling.  Adding orange zest to the lemon and lime would be a nice twist to these, but do not think for a minute these bars need any improvement – they are perfect in every way.  The best lemon bar I’ve ever tasted.

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Caramel Nut Bars

Need a ton of cookie bars in not a lot of time?  Make these!  This recipe consists of a basic cookie-like crust, a trio of toasted nuts, and a sweet ooey-gooey caramel to holds it all together.  These would make great lunchbox desserts!

You start by toasting some cashews, pecans, and peanuts in the oven.

A quick crust is made with butter, brown sugar, and flour (and a pinch of salt).  This is dumped out onto a shallow, buttered-and-parchment-lined baking sheet.  It doesn’t seem like nearly enough dough to cover the large pan, but the recipe instructs you to lay another parchment sheet on top and use a rolling pin (or your hands) to push the dough around and even it out.

It really works!  In no time I had a smooth, uniform crust that evenly covered the entire pan.  The crust bakes on its own and then cools completely before the topping goes on.

So, then you make the caramel.  This milky looking mixture is sugar, water, and some cream of tartar.  It’s left to cook undisturbed until it reaches 300°F.

This seemed to take forever – I kept putting my thermometer in thinking it was close to done only to find the temperature had risen a measly three or four degrees.  It probably took about 20 minutes to finally get there (give or take – I really wasn’t paying close attention so don’t go thinking that “20 minutes” is anything more than my deluded approximation).

Finally my thermometer read 300°F (although my caramel was nowhere near as dark as the caramel featured in the MSBH’s pictures for this recipe).  Regardless, at this point, I slowly poured in the cream and the mixture started foaming and sputtering like dehydrated revival preacher. No good photos of that part, though I tried.  (I really have to stop trying to photograph myself doing anything with cooking/candying techniques.  It’s playing a dangerous game.)

Off the heat, once all the cream has been in incorporated, a hunk of butter is stirred in.

What’s left is a thick, smooth, creamy caramel sauce – and a lot of it!  This goes into a bowl to cool.  My caramel is much, much lighter in color than that shown in the MSBH and a good deal softer than what it was supposed to be, I think.  Perhaps my thermometer needs calibrating – my caramel probably could have cooked a few more minutes before adding the cream.  No big thing, though, as it tasted fantastic and all worked out in the end.

A self--portrait too!

After the caramel cools a bit, the toasted nuts are stirred in.

…and poured onto the baked crust.

I used a wooden spoon to push the caramel-nut topping out to the sides of the pan.  Super easy.  Then it went into the oven to bake and “set” the caramel – just about 10 minutes.

I let it cool completely and then de-panned it all in one large piece.  This was a cinch – buttering the pan and using parchment paper made it effortless.

From there, it was just a matter of slicing the individual pieces.  A sharp knife made quick work of it.

Once sliced, they lift off of the parchment easily.  The crust is perfectly simple and baked up so nicely.

The bars kept really well in tupperware at room temperature – it took me about a week to get through the seven pieces I kept for myself and they were perfect right through the seventh day.  I have no clue how well these would freeze.

As you can probably imagine, they are incredibly sweet.  The salty nuts are a great contrast to the caramel, however, and the cookie crust just minds its own business, as it should.

I think it’s a creative use of three nuts that you don’t necessarily think of together in baked goods.  These bars are the quintessential homemade candy bar and the MSBH even has a variation that incorporates chocolate.

Cut the pieces small – a little goes a long way!

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Jam Crumb Bars

These are really easy to make and another project that kids could help with.

One major note – the jam is what truly shines in this recipe, so go out of your way to use a good one.  I always pick up a few bottles of Danish fruit spread when I’m at JAX in Fort Collins.  I love the unique flavors and because the jam is not boiled during processing, the fruit tastes as close to fresh as possible.  I’ve made these bars with all kinds of spreads and my favorites are definitely strong berry flavors like lingonberry, raspberry, and blackberry.

The crust itself is a simple mixture including flour and almond meal, with butter cut in to hold it all together.

The crust is spread out in a large shallow baking sheet and then pressed down.

Jam is spread over the crust.  Because this recipe makes so many bars, I choose two different jams and use each on just one-half of the pan.  This is the blackberry jam.  I used lingonberry on the other side.

The remaining crust is crumbled on top before baking.

And then the oven does the rest.

Once baked, the bars cool in the pan completely before being sliced into individual portions.  The cutting and de-panning are incredibly easy; lining the pan with buttered parchment makes quick work of it.

The flavor of the jam I use is so intense that I opt to the cut the bars fairly small.  The buttery crust also contributes to the richness of these bars, so a small portion is more than enough.

These bars freeze fairly well (although they are only good for about a day after thawing) and so the large yield doesn’t pose too much a problem.  I think they’d be a fantastic lunch box dessert – you could make a big batch and freeze the individual bars, pulling one out of the freezer each morning and it will be thawed and ready come lunch time!

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