When you have a good blondie recipe in your possession you can create a bar cookie with almost infinite variations. I sometimes think that I like brown butter blondies bars better than brownies. They are rich, they are chewy, and they are sort of flavor-neutral in that there are SO many additions and variations that you can make! Plus the browned butter gives them an extra richness that I love. When you combine the flavors of brown sugar, pecans, and bourbon whatever you are making becomes ...
Sweet and Salty Brownies
I think it was almost two weeks ago that I posted a link that I'd found on the Internet to pretzel brownies. They looked really good but used a mix - which I don't like to do. I decided to work with the recipe a bit to get it to the point it was exactly what I wanted it to be. ...
Copycat Cranberry Bliss Bars
A couple of years ago Starbucks started serving Cranberry Bliss bars - basically a blondie with cranberries, ginger, and orange that is topped with a thin frosting, sprinkled with more dried cranberries and then drizzled with white chocolate. It was an instant hit - right a long with their pumpkin latte I've tried several cranberry bliss bar recipes and this is the one I like best. These are great to have as a snack in the afternoon. Pour a cup of hot coffee and watch the snow fall as you ...
Old Fashioned Hoosier Peanut Bars
I have tried every way I can think of to research the beginnings of Hoosier Peanut Bars. The name sounds like something from the 1930s and I found out that a version of the bar cookies were entered into the Pillsbury Bake-Off in 1949 by Edgar Bleeke of Fort Wayne, Indiana. He won, by the way. My version is based on a recipe from a 1950's cookbook put out by the Federation of Women's Clubs, who ever that was. It is a collection of recipes from all over the country and is truly falling ...
Red Velvet Brownies
I have a recipe written in a spidery handwriting on a faded piece of torn notebook paper. It has intrigued me forever because it sounded so special - Waldorf Red Cake. This recipe was my grandmother's and I am guessing it is from the late 1920s or early 1930s. Yep, you guessed it - it's a fancy name for good old red velvet cake. Food historians believe that red velvet cake got its color from a reaction between the acids in buttermilk and the alkalinity in the old type of cocoa. ...