Chocolate Chip Cookie Cheesecake Bars

These sounded tasty and I was looking for a new sweet treat to try.

Notes:

• I used regular size sugar free chocolate chips because I didn't want to go looking for mini ones.

Verdict: They were less sweet tasting than I was hoping for, but I did like them generally and would make them again. My sugar eating husband liked them too.

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RECIPE: Keto Chocolate Chip Cookie Cheesecake Bars (Carolyn Ketchum, All Day I Dream About Food)

 

Keto Fudgy Brownies

A big reason I haven't posted new recipe results in a while is because I have had to implement major diet changes this year for medical reasons, which involved cutting out all sugar, grain, and starchy foods (essentially a medically supervised ketogenic diet) and it took some time to figure out what I can still make and eat that fits within my new guidelines and adjust to my new eating habits. Thankfully all my experience with cooking has made it fairly easy to identify foods that will work for me. It has been going well and I am feeling a lot better already.

With my birthday coming up I was determined to find a recipe for a sweet but not sugary treat. I hadn't really been able to have a proper dessert since April and was missing it a lot. These seemed fairly straightforward to make and had ingredients in them that I could find at nearby grocery stores, and unlike a lot of "keto friendly" store bought treats with weirdly calculated portion sizes or online recipes these fit well within the carbohydrate budget I am supposed to stick to (no "net carb" bullshit here).

Notes:

• I bought several kinds of sugar free chocolate chips to try and I found I prefer the kind with some sweetener in them (Lily's dark chocolate were my favorite), though I'll admit the Lindt 100% cacao bar has a really wonderful texture and tastes great for having no sweeteners whatsoever. I will not be buying Pascha chips again.
• This was my first experience baking with allulose and while it generally acts like sugar, it has this aftereffect sort of like a mild acid burn, like when you eat a lot of sour candy, but even after only eating small amounts. I guess in a way it's good because it will prevent me from overeating it because I don't like that sensation haha.
  
• I found it hard to tell whether they were properly done. By the time the testing skewer definitively comes out clean they are likely overdone because they'll keep cooking in the pan a bit, so the second time I made them I removed them from the oven when the skewer was mostly clean.
  

Verdict: They were really good! Of course the texture is slightly different from a regular brownie. You can tell they are not the same. But for what it is it's very good. I'm glad I was able to make myself a satisfying chocolate birthday treat. I have made these again since the initial attempt and still really liked them so I am definitely planning to keep this as a go-to.

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RECIPE: Best Fudgy Keto Brownies (Arman Liew, The Big Man's World)

Updating to include weights of ingredients because it was a lot easier to make that way.

3/4 cup (6 oz, 170 g) butter
1/2 cup (3 oz, 85 g) keto chocolate chips divided
1/2 cup (60 g) almond flour
1/4 cup (20 g) cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup (115 g) allulose
3 large eggs

Rhubarb Crisp Bars

I made this Smitten Kitchen recipe with all rhubarb and no strawberries because I do not like cooked strawberries. I only got a picture of it before baking, haha.

Notes:

• I did not use the extra 2 tbsp flour because I was not using strawberries (rhubarb is a lot less juicy).
• I did use the cornstarch.
  

Verdict: They were a little hard to get out of the pan, but they did taste nice and were not soggy. I would definitely consider making these again if I wanted my rhubarb in bar form.

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RECIPE: Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp Bars (Smitten Kitchen)

Pumpkin Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

I wanted a Halloween-y dessert with pumpkin, and also brownies, and was inspired by a friend's post of pumpkin cheesecake bars decorated with chocolate. Why not make both? At the SAME TIME?

Notes:

• I doubled the recipe and made it in a 9 x 13 inch pan.
  
• I reduced the sugar in the brownie part significantly, from 1 1/4 cups to 3/4 cup because it seemed like a LOT for an 8x8 pan, and I wanted the brownie part to taste like chocolate and not just sugar.
• I omitted the cinnamon from the brownie portion because I don't like the combination of cinnamon and chocolate.
• These freeze really well!
  

Verdict: I thought these looked really pretty and tasted fine (so glad I reduced the sugar!) but I just don't think pumpkin + chocolate is my thing. I would make them if someone asked me to, but I don't think I'll go out of my way to make them again.

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RECIPE: Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies (The Recipe Critic)

Holiday Bakeathon 2019

Our sixth holiday baking day together! We were all kind of tired but things still moved along nicely.

Left: marshmallow, right: cream cheese icing

Gingerbread cookies this year were conspicuously Untitled Goose Game themed.

*honk*

Left: gingerbread; Right: chocolate biscotti

We all have a fancy stand mixer now so we had to take the below video because we can. And for internet points.

*Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries plays*

RECIPES

• Spicy Gingerbread Cookies (Smitten Kitchen) -- our old standby. I never get tired of how they taste with cream cheese frosting, and we keep coming up with new and/or funny ways to decorate them.
• Chocolate Caramel Crackers (Smitten Kitchen) -- chosen because both Sarah and I were eyeing it for several years but hadn't made it yet. We used matzo and added sliced almonds on top. Pretty easy to make, makes a lot, and tastes great. I made a second batch for my work holiday party because I missed it after my portion was gone and we had enough leftover ingredients to make it again. Definitely keeping this recipe around. I'd love to try it with saltine crackers. *Update: I tried it with saltines and very slightly prefer the matzo crackers because they're less crumbly.
• Cream Cheese Frosting -- for the gingerbread.
• Cinnamon-Sugar Rugelach -- a perennial favorite. Made a second batch because my husband was sad when they were gone (they are his favorite cookie) and I'm glad I did because I got to introduce my sister to them.
• Double Chocolate Biscotti (MyRecipes) -- we added dried cherries and pistachios and I really liked them this way.
• Homemade Marshmallows (Alton Brown) -- another perennial favorite. I wanted to put peppermint in them but Sarah said no. :P
• Linzer Torte (Maida Heatter via Smitten Kitchen) -- my big error for the day was accidentally baking it on too high a temperature. The outside got very very dark, a shade before burnt, which is very sad when you spend all that time shaping dough into a lattice and making it look pretty. (This recipe takes two hours of active work to make by myself.) Make sure you turn your oven down for the final long bake. I made a small (5 inch) heart shaped one out of the leftover dough that I did not burn, and that one turned out really cute! If you decide to make it a non-standard shape, make sure you have a pan or mold to keep the bottom crust's shape while it bakes. The sides of my bottom crust started collapsing once it got warm in the oven, but an aluminum foil mold helped. Once the bottom crust was parbaked and solidified, it held its shape and I didn't need the foil barriers anymore. I redeemed myself by making a second batch that DID turn out really well, half for my parents (my dad liked it but my mom is seemingly impossible to impress) and half for Christmas Day dinner with my neighbor's family.

BAKEATHONS PAST

• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014

Scotcheroos

This is one thing I always loved but my family didn't make. I think I first had one at my dad's company picnic. I was in love with the sweet-salty, crispy bottom and chocolate frosting with some delicious extra flavor I couldn't identify. They popped up occasionally throughout my childhood but they were always at large events with lots of people where I didn't know who brought them so I couldn't ask about what they were.

Fast forward to college after I'd met my husband. I went over to his house once and he had come back from visiting his grandma with a big plate of these. I got really excited. Finally, I could ask someone! Scotcheroos, they were called. I looked up a recipe. They're like Rice Krispies treats but with peanut butter mixed in and a butterscotch-chocolate frosted top. The mystery flavor was butterscotch. I had watched my mom make Rice Krispies treats so I knew they'd be easy to make for myself. Oddly it took me quite some time after that before I ended up making them myself, maybe because he started bringing me to his family reunions shortly thereafter and I knew I'd get my fill of these at least once a year.

The family reunions have stopped now that Grandma C is no longer with us, but thanks to her I can make my own now.

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RECIPE:

Scotcheroos
from Rice Krispies
Makes 1 9x13 inch pan; serves 24

1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
6 cups Rice Krispies or other unsweetened puffed rice cereal
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips

Place corn syrup and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat on the stove. Cook, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved and mixture has come to a boil. Remove pan from heat and stir in peanut butter until well mixed. Stir in cereal until well coated, then turn out the mixture into a greased 9x13 inch rectangular pan. Working quickly, press into an even layer. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile, place the semisweet chocolate chips and butterscotch chips in a medium microwave safe bowl. Heat on high for 15-20 seconds at a time, stirring well after each heat time, until melted. Spread evenly over the cereal mixture in the pan and let stand until set. Cut into bars when completely cooled. Store covered at room temperature.

Guava Swirl Cheesecake Bars

When my next door neighbors moved last year they gave us a whole bunch of food that they didn't want to take with them, and that included a jar of guava butter from Hawaii. Having lived in the Midwest US my entire life, I don't really have a good idea of what guava tastes like or should taste like, or what tastes good with it. I took a look in The Flavor Bible and it listed cream cheese as a particularly good flavor pairing, so I got the idea to swirl it into cheesecake. As it turns out I had a box of graham cracker crumbs too, so that made this pan of bars come together extra quickly.

I gave half to a friend that likes sweet fruity things as a birthday present. :)

This is a variation on the Nutella Swirl Cheesecake Bars from Sally's Baking Addiction. All I did differently was to swap out the Nutella for an equal amount of guava butter. I was surprised to find that the guava butter changes colors depending on the temperature! It turned from a dull pink when it was cold to the pretty bright red in the picture after coming out of the oven! It turned back to the dull pink after putting them in the fridge.

Verdict: The original recipe is solid and delicious, and I think it took well to replacing the chocolate part with jam/fruit butter. I think I would add more guava butter next time because I could barely taste it, but the swirls seemed to stay on top so maybe I didn't swirl it downward enough.

RECIPE: Nutella Swirl Cheesecake Bars

A Love Letter to the Berwick Street Brownie

Gabriella Simonian's Berwick Street Brownie is my go-to brownie recipe. I found it in 2013 or 2014 and have made it at least several times a year since. Thank goodness the Wayback Machine saved a copy before the author's blog disappeared! It appears she has moved on to a career as a professional photographer. I wish her well and thank her for all of the effort that went into this delicious recipe.

Changes (few and small)

• 180°C ≈ 355°F; 350°F is fine if your oven doesn't get that precise with the temperature setting.
• I add 1-2 teaspoons of vanilla extract along with the coffee. Clear imitation vanilla extract makes them taste more like box brownies, if that's something you like.
• I mix the cocoa powder into the dry ingredients instead of the stovetop mixture because I feel it gets mixed in more evenly this way.
• Sometimes I put in the walnuts, sometimes I don't. Tastes great either way.
• I cut mine into 24; cutting into 16 makes them pretty huge for my liking.

Variation:

• For the winter holidays last year, a couple of friends sent us a batch of brownies (not this recipe) that contained caramel chips and black walnuts they'd harvested and toasted themselves, and they were really, really good.
• I tried it with the batch pictured and the caramel chips unfortunately melted into the batter. They are much softer than chocolate chips, or at least Hershey's salted caramel chips are. I want little pockets of caramel chip in my brownies!
• Edit 6/24/19: This time I froze the caramel chips first and they stayed intact in the final product. Freeze your caramel chips before adding them to the batter and you'll get little pockets, though I think the caramel flavor is less pronounced this way than melting them into the batter. 
• I think this would also work great with peanut butter chips, if that's more your thing.
• Black walnuts have a unique earthy flavor that I really like with chocolate. If you can find them and you like nuts in your brownies, give them a try! My local Hyvee sells them, but you might have even better luck (and get better quality) if you go to a farmers' market. Toasting them before adding to the batter will deepen their flavor.

Some opinions on brownies
I have strong opinions on brownies.

• The best brownies are dense and fudgy. Brownies with cake-like texture are basically chocolate cake. If you want cake, make chocolate cake.
• Interior piece life. I was confused when I saw this brownie pan that ensures you have edges on every piece. Why would anyone want that? Clearly it is not for me. I'd rather have an edge brownie than no brownie, though. I'm not a monster. ;)
• Brownies from boxed mix these days are a joke. When I was a kid they gave you enough mix in the box to fill a 9x13 pan with brownies almost an inch thick. They've kept reducing the amount of the mix in the box so that now they barely bake up to half an inch thick. BOO. They also don't taste very much like chocolate, but they never did so this is less disappointing. Given how they've kept taking things away from it I don't expect them to start now.
• They make clear imitation vanilla extract now, which I have discovered is the one thing about boxed brownie mix that kept me crawling back. Yes, I know real vanilla extract is superior in basically every way but there's something nostalgic and still very much appealing about the aroma of clear imitation vanilla in baked goods to me. (Is it different from the brown imitation vanilla besides the color? It just smells and tastes better somehow.)

RECIPE: The Berwick Street Brownie

Butterscotch Walnut Blondies

I made butterscotch blondies to bring to a Thanksgiving gathering. We had to work the next day so we didn't go to visit our families, but our neighbors invited us to their family celebration. We were asked to make a dessert of some kind, and I wanted to make a pie but was recovering from being sick and was not quite up to the work. Then I decided since we knew the other desserts were going to be pie, maybe I'd do something that was not pie (and easier to make).

For most of my life blondies were never high on a list of desserts I'd actively choose to make/eat, but butterscotch ones made an appearance at a tae kwon do club post-promotion test dinner a couple of years ago (made by my friend Sarah, who introduces me to all kinds of new recipes) and I ate WAY more of them than anyone should because they were so delicious. I decided I needed to be able to make them too. They're an addictive combination of buttery, sweet, and salty. Kids love them too, or at least my neighbors' kids and their cousins did.

I made this recipe from My Kitchen Addiction, adapted from Dorie Greenspan's recipe.

My adjustments, mostly out of convenience rather than trying to improve the recipe:

• I lined the pan with parchment instead of greasing it (so you can lift the entire thing out of the pan easily, plus it's easier to clean).
• Since I didn't have butter rum extract, I put in about 1/2 tbsp of bourbon whiskey instead (increased the amount because I imagine butter rum extract is quite strong). I have also substituted spiced rum before, and I think I like the spiced rum better.
• I sprinkled fleur de sel on top of the batter before putting it in the oven.

I still don't know what recipe Sarah used and I feel like this one is good and close but it's not *exactly* what I was going for. Maybe the chocolate and shredded coconut in Dorie's recipe would help? I have also tried miso butterscotch blondies and I thought those were yummy, probably because of the extra layer of saltiness. I also seem to remember trying Smitten Kitchen's Blondies, Infinitely Adaptable with butterscotch chips (I didn't need an entire 9x13 pan of them, or so I thought) and I seemed to remember that batch being particularly good. I think next time I'll try the SK version again. Come to think of it, both SK and the miso ones had browned butter. Maybe that is what makes all the difference.

RECIPE: Butterscotch Walnut Blondies

Rhubarb Custard Bars

I made the Rhubarb Bars on Chocolate With Grace. My thoughts and experiences and changes are below.

Crust
+ generous pinch of kosher salt
+ 2 tbsp cold water (Verdict: probably unnecessary but the mix was quite dry otherwise and I was afraid it wouldn't bind. I think this might have contributed to why it took ~23 minutes to brown, but I also think it helped pack it down to make nice solid crust to help keep them together)

Filling
Tossed flour with rhubarb instead of mixing it into the eggs so I wouldn't get lumps/pockets of flour and also so the rhubarb wouldn't all float to the top (but the floating part isn't really a problem because there's not enough custard for it to float in). Seemed to work OK.
- 2/3 cup sugar (I would take out an entire cup next time because it was still pretty sweet with 1 1/3 cups sugar, possibly even down to 3/4 cup total given that the filling is not terribly thick)
+ 1 tsp vanilla
+ 1/2 tsp ground cardamom (I would add even a little more next time but probably not an entire teaspoon)

Other notes
Baked 30 minutes and they were no longer jiggly, but looked a little syrupy under the top crust when cold. Tasted fine though and were solid enough to stay in squares when cut and eggs are cooked enough so as to not be dangerous.

They were sitting in a pool of syrup after cutting and being stacked in the fridge all day. Still delicious, but kind of messy and after a day or so they started to get soft enough to fall apart.

RECIPE: Rhubarb Custard Bars

Almond Rhubarb Picnic Bars

I made these for a dinner party I hosted at my house. I was daydreaming about the nectarine bars Sarah made for my first tea party, as well as looking for a good use for some of the fresh rhubarb growing in my garden, and I had never tried almond and rhubarb together but it sounded delicious.

I made them exactly as instructed and they turned out great. Our guest loved them too! I'd definitely make them again.

RECIPE: Almond Rhubarb Picnic Bars