Monday, January 16, 2012

Kitchen Diary 2012 - Cranberry Oat Bars


Step one: think you’re going to be clever and make an apricot filling with some apricot nectar (oh…we didn’t learn our lesson, did we?) and…

There aren’t any dried apricots in the pantry. That’s awesome! Because we, like, were going to put those in some simmering apricot nectar – which is already in the saucepan – and. Fuck. There are cranberries in the freezer, and their skins are packed with pectin (that thing which puts the "jell" in jelly). Put two cups of those in with that simmering apricot nectar, about a half-cup of sugar and simmer it until it’s a thick jam.

Preheat the oven to 350F and spray an 8x8-inch pan with cooking spray.

In a mixer, combine the following:

- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 ¾ sticks softened butter

Add 1 ½ cups rolled oats

In a bowl, combine the following and add to the butter/sugar mixture:
- 1 ½ cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt

Press half of the mixture into the pan. Press in about a dozen pieces of chopped semisweet chocolate (we happened to have a bag of fancy Sharffen Berger baking pieces around). Spread the jam on top of this (the above accident makes about a cup). Press the remaining mixture over top – firmly and evenly. Bake for about 30-40 minutes. These must cool completely before you can tuck in, or they’ll crumble all to hell and you can only scoop it out with a spoon.

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