Week 13: Cheesecake - Cheesecake Bars

I was a tiny bit behind on making this one, but I don't think anyone can blame me. I was busy pulling off the surprise of the century and entertaining guests! So, a few days late, but here they are. I found the recipe on the  King Arthur Flour site and left out the lemon rind and juice but other wise followed the recipe closely but half agained it in size to fit into a 13x9.

The crust is the classic butter, graham cracker, sugar, cinnamon mix. Pressed into a 13x9 and baked briefly.

The filling was pretty easy.  Cream cheese, eggs, sugar, plain greek yogurt (substituted for the heavy cream/sour cream called for in the recipe), and a scraped out half of a vanilla bean.

Costco has the greatest deal on vanilla beans and they are quite long. I cut one in half then split it down the middle and scraped out the insides. My goodness it smells so good. 

After the crust was cooled slightly, I poured in the filling and baked it at 325 for about 30 minutes. 

I cooled it over night in the fridge and cut them into small squares in the morning.  My coworkers couldn't stop talking about how great they were. They are light and fluffy and I've already had requests for a redeux. 

Week 9 - Cookies - Oatmeal Fudge Cookie Bars

First off, let me say these are delicious. Now that we have that out of the way, I confess that although I love love love making cookies (I go a little nuts around the holidays in particular), I just did not have the brain power or time to handle the whole cookie sheet and batches process, so although perhaps a cop out to do bars, I guarantee you'll see plenty of cookies from me in the future. Also, this sorta serves as a double BC/CC whammy since I used coffee in the fudge port of this creation. 

As many of you know I am working on finishing up my Masters degree and with only two weeks left this quarter it is crunch time. I had (ugh, still have) copious amounts of writing to do and spent most of my weekend hunkered down in my office at work getting homework done. I know this is a food blog, but just to give you a glimpse of my weekend, here is my qualitative theme analysis spread out on three desks.

Now, lets forget about that an get on with this week's challenge details! The nice thing about this recipe is that the oatmeal mixture you make serves as both the crust and the topping! It is a basic oatmeal, brown sugar, flour, melted butter mixture. Pretty straight forward.

I pressed 2/3 of the mixture into a foil lined 13x9 and threw that in the oven for 12 mins or so - till just brown and firm. This picture is a little foggy but shows the baked crust and the leftover mix ready to be used as topping.

After cooling the crust, I put the chocolate chips into a double boiler. I was a little short on the chocolate chips so I improvised and added some butterscotch to the mix.  

Once melted I whisked in two eggs until fully incorporated.

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While the chocolate and butter scotch melted, I threw together a little mix of dry goods including sugar, flour, and instant coffee. This gets added to the chocolate and egg mixture next.

The result is a thick brownie batter-like substance which I then spread over the cooled crust.

Sprinkle the remaining oatmeal mixture on top and pop it in the over!

Here it is fully cooked and cooling.

I cut them into small 2 or 3 bite bars (I learned my lesson with those White Trash Bars back in week 6) and, of course, dug in. They are really tasty and I like the addition of the slight butterscotch taste in the fudgey middle.  Pretty easy and quite good -these are getting added to the repertoire for sure. Now, Andrew and I just have to avoid eating them all before Wednesday - these are intended for a work potluck that day. Probably won't be too hard for Andrew since he's not a huge sweets person, but my will power will be another story. Although, the fact that I'll be at work doing homework till late every night means they have a hope of surviving till the potluck.

Week 6: Elegant - Elegant as Sh*t White Trash Bars

OK, so I wasn't particularly inspired by the Brazilian cooking challenge this week. Well, the same goes for the baking challenge. "Elegant" did not exactly fill me with excitement. I watched to see what other people were posting and I noticed a theme - adding silver or pearl balls to normal items to make them "elegant". Ha. It cracked me up so I went about hunting down the most trashy, ridiculous recipe I could find. I give you Elegant as Sh*t White Trash Bars

You begin with 2 sleeves of Ritz crackers and crumble them up into a greased 13x9 pan.

On top, I you drizzle 1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk. 

In the 13x9 you mix it all up with a 16oz bag of some kind of toffee/chocolate crumbles - Heath or Skor perhaps. Press it back into the pan and bake for 15-20mins - or until it is hot a little bubbly. Once it cools completely, the recipe calls for a whole tub of vanilla frosting. WHaaaaaaat? I dislike (if I am being kind) store bought tub frosting.  So, this is where my "elegant" part comes in... I made butter frosting with Bailey's instead of milk to make a wonderfully creamy and rich frosting.

Then, to top it all off and make it super classy and elegant: pearl balls! 

I cut the first few bars into 2"x2" squares and all four of us just about puked upon trying to eat the whole bar.  Don't get me wrong, they are delicious - really, surprisingly good. But, the 1"x1" nugget sized bars were far more palatable. Be prepared for immediate onset of diabetes - I don't guarantee it, but it would not surprise me at all.