Brandied Fruit and Nut Bars

Just one more sweet treat for Christmas before I’m out of time. This recipe is so delicious that I had to get it posted. I didn’t get a new Christmas cookie going (not that I don’t have enough good cookies to bake and enjoy this time of year), and the quick decision to try this recipe, based on one in the red and white checked classic Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, was rewarded way, way above and beyond what my quick decisions usually deserve. And these lovely mouthfuls have plenty of holiday street cred, as well, with a cookie-like crust, dried fruit, and a bit of Christmas spirit….in the form of brandy.

Since I only needed to go out and buy one ingredient to make these Brandied Fruit and Nut Bars, it was a pretty quick turn around from idea to delicious treats. If I would have needed to brave the unseasonal sunshine to acquire every single ingredient in the list, however, it would have been totally worth the effort for these yummy beauties. I barely changed the recipe from the original, only adding some additional flavor because I’m convinced that many fruits are performance-enhanced by a splash of almond extract, and that a buttery crust cannot do its job without a pinch or two of salt.

These bars were a big hit with the small group that I got to serve them to as part of an informal little “Friend-mas” gathering. In fact, I gave most of them away and ate much of what was left, so I nearly missed a chance to take a photo before they were gone. They may look a little humble here, but don’t let that fool you. Their flavor is complex, with a balanced, fruity sweetness. The crust is crunchy, but not crumbly and contrasts nicely in texture with the gooey topping. That topping is loaded with lightly toasted pecans, along with dried apricots, raisins, and craisins that have been plumped up in brandy.

It’s always such a pleasure to make people happy with a small mouthful of something delicious, and these bars helped me do that in high style. High Holiday style, that is. Merry Christmas to you!

Brandied Fruit and Nut Bars

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

2/3 cup raisins

1/3 craisins (dried cranberries)

1/3 cup chopped dried apricots

1/3 cup brandy

1/3 cup chopped pecans

1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour, divided

1 1/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1/3 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon almond extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. In a medium-size saucepan, combine the raisins, craisins, apricots and brandy. Stir to coat all of the fruit in the brandy. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally to keep the fruit moistened. Remove from the heat and allow to stand at least 20 minutes while preparing the rest of the recipe.

2. In a small skillet, toast the pecans over medium heat, just until fragrant and beginning to brown. Remove from the heat and set aside.

3. In a medium-size bowl, stir together 1 cup flour and 1/3 cup brown sugar. Using a pastry blender, a fork, or your hands, cut in the butter until it is all in very small, well-coated pieces. The mixture should resemble coarse crumbs.

4. Press the flour mixture firmly into the bottom of an ungreased 8 x 8-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 F for 15-20 minutes, or until firm and golden brown.

5. While baking the crust, prepare the topping. Place the eggs in the bowl of an electric stand mixer (or another medium bowl if you are using a hand-held mixer). Using the paddle attachment, beat on low speed for 4 minutes.

6. Stir in the remaining 1/3 cup flour, the remaining 1 cup brown sugar, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Drain the excess brandy from the fruit and stir the fruit into the egg mixture. Stir in the pecans.

7. Pour the egg mixture over the hot crust and spread it out evenly. Bake at 350 F for 35-40 minutes or until the topping is well-set and golden brown. Check the bars after about 20 minutes of baking and place aluminum foil over the pan if the topping seems to be browning excessively.

8. Cool completely and cut into bars of desired size. (I cut mine into about 1 ½ inch squares.)

Other recipes like this one: Date Bars with Spiced Rum, Oatmeal and Dried Cherry Bars, Maple Date Oatmeal Bars

Friday Night: Christmas Thoughts

I haven’t quite given up on Christmas yet.

Yet.

I have a couple of co-workers who cheerfully sing and shout, “Christmas!” whenever a Christmas song is played on the local radio station (which is shockingly often). They’re asking me what level of Christmas attire they will be allowed to wear to work on Christmas Day. (Christmas pants!?!) They are unapologetic and refuse to be ground under the grumblings of the rest of us. They may be saving my life.

I don’t know what happened….well, maybe I do. I’ve always loved Christmas. As a child, I couldn’t wait for the season. I listened to my vinyl Christmas records as much as I could. I refused to stop believing in Santa Claus. As an adult, I baked and made candies, made homemade gifts and hand-decorated wrapping paper. I even still listened to Christmas music voluntarily.

And then, somehow, Christmas became a job. There were so many things to do. So many people to please. Food gifts, which I loved to give, often fell into the, “I don’t like this,” category, and didn’t seem worth fussing over. And then The Day Job became the Christmas job, quite literally. I’m in management and am not supposed to be part of the holiday rotation, but food service staffing is ridiculously sparse. It appears that I will be working on Christmas again this year, which will be three of the last four years. I also will have a difficult time getting enough days off in a row to make the 300-mile trip to visit my family. My husband’s family is three times further away, and we see them even less often.

There are also, of course, people I miss at the holidays, but, while their absence is painful, the memories are peaceful, funny, and warm.

I’ve never thought I’d need to be Whoville-ed into checking my own special brand of cynicism, but I’ve been exposed as a Grinch, or nearly so. My co-workers have put me in my place without really intending to. They also have to work for the holidays. They also won’t get to visit faraway family, or don’t have much family to visit. They’re determined to enjoy themselves, however, and, by the end of last week, I was feeling not a little shame.

And so I stocked up on my favorites…

**From the stores. There are a few store-bought treats that are only available at this time of year, and their perceived rarity makes them even more delicious. My husband has to have a box or two of dark chocolate covered cherries with liquid centers. I particularly love white fudge dipped Oreo cookies, white chocolate-peppermint covered pretzels, and minty M&M’s.

**Ideas. Many of my favorite things at this time of year are ideas: crafts I don’t have time to make, new dessert and cookie recipes I hope to try, old favorites I want to enjoy. For example, I want to make a peppermint infused version of a basic white cake (like this one I put berries in). I think it would be good with chocolate ganache on top or a minty version of this Simple Butter Frosting.

I also have ideas for eggnog butter cookies, cranberry pie, and big decadent cheesecakes.

**Old favorites. I’ve already had a chance to make batches of some of my favorite cookies for Christmas, such as Peanut Butter Cookies with Peanut Butter Cups, Milk Chocolate Chip and M&M Cookies, and Sugar Cookies. I also have ingredients on hand to make Mint Chocolate Cookies, Eggnog Muffins with Streusel Topping, Caramel Corn, peanut brittle (I use the Better Homes and Gardens recipe), and fudge.

 

Yes, I’m making my way through this holiday season, trying to enjoy a new path to new traditions, starting with a Friend-mas celebration this weekend. I’m doing my best to express my appreciation to the co-workers who are helping me see the light. And seeing light somewhere is really what we need to do. These literally dark days call for as much celebration as we can manage. Sweet treats, family and friend traditions, giving gifts and graciously receiving them, and decorating (my tree is up and partially decorated!): these things help us get through the cold and snow and ice and 4:00 pm sunsets. This power we have over the potential for our environment to turn us into Grinch-y Scrooges is what makes us human. Enjoy the season however you can!

One year ago: Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

26 Cookies for the Holidays

It’s time! It’s time! It’s time! It’s time to create and consume cookies with impunity! Christmas comes with an automatic, unlimited, infinitely renewable License to Cookie. We must use this privilege. Perhaps even abuse it! Maybe we won’t lose it if we don’t use it, but we certainly will be judged differently if we try to apply for such a decadent license later than January 1.

A perusal of The Archives will leave you with little doubt that my favorite sweets to make over the years have been cookies and bars. As far as I’m concerned, they all qualify as Christmas Cookies, because they’re all cookies, except for the bars, which are pans full of cookies all run together, then cut apart again.

 

Here are 26 favorites of various shapes and flavors. Each is equally welcome on my holiday cookie platter.

Drop cookies are probably the easiest to manage. In most cases, the doughs can be wrapped well and frozen, so you can pull cookie dough out of the freezer to bake fresh cookies just about any time. (I prefer to do this than to freeze baked cookies.) Most of these recipes are some variation on classic chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, and peanut butter cookies.

Gumdrop Cookies

Double Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chai Spice Cashew Butter Cookies

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Milk Chocolate Chip and M&M Cookies (pictured above)

Orange and White Chocolate Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies with Peanut Butter Cups

Rum Raisin Oatmeal Cookies

Oatmeal Date Cookies with Cardamom

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies

Apricot and Almond Cookies with White Chocolate (pictured below)

Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies with Black Walnuts

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Other cookies may involve some extra shaping, such as rolling out and cutting, shaping into logs and slicing, or rolling into balls. Most of these also come from doughs that can be frozen.

Mint Chocolate Cookies (made this way or that way; pictured above)

Ginger Molasses Cookies (pictured at top)

Lemon, Lime, and Basil Cookies

Orange Butter Cookies

Sugar Cookies (great with Simple Butter Frosting; pictured above and below)

Finally, here are some brownies and other bars. There’s often a lot less fuss with a pan of bars that you can just whip up, bake off, and cut up to share. These freeze better as bars and aren’t suitable to freeze as doughs/batters. Don’t forget: you can exponentially increase your flavor genius by adding or swapping different fruits, nuts and candies into these easy treats. (I suppose this applies to all of the above as well!)

Cocoa Chocolate Chip Brownies

Fudgy Mint Brownies (pictured above)

Graham Cracker Almond Bars

Maple Date Oatmeal Bars

Oatmeal and Dried Cherry Bars (pictured above)

Oatmeal Pecan Chocolate Chip Bars

Peanut Butter Butterfinger Blondies

Walnut and White Chocolate Blondies (pictured below)

There are so many ways to exercise your license to cookie, satisfy your sweet tooth, and make your family and friends happy! Get in the kitchen and get your cookie on!

One year ago: 10 Favorites with Fresh Cranberries

Honey Raisin Bread

 

While I love baking breads with at least some whole grain flour in them, I’m also happy to make a richer, fluffier, sweeter loaf on occasion. This one, which is also studded with dark raisins, is made with all bread flour, and is nearly as indulgently satisfying as dessert.

I always feel a bit irresponsible when writing about a kneaded yeast bread recipe on these pages. Not because of the carbohydrate loaded nature of the final product. (It has never been my goal to be nutritionally elite.) It’s because of the somewhat careless way I put together a loaf of bread. Success in baking is usually accomplished by applied accuracy. Recipes for really great fancy baked goods have measurements that consider tiny increments like grams and milliliters. My bread recipes tend to use language like, “3 cups bread flour, or more as needed,” or brief descriptions of what the dough should be like when it’s time to stop kneading or adding flour.

 

This recipe is no exception. I started with a cup of warm milk. I wanted to sweeten and enrich the bread, so added ¼ cup of each honey and soft, unsalted butter. I knew this would hold about 3 cups of bread flour, so that’s what I kneaded in. It was about right. The dough came together in my stand mixer, smooth and elastic, slightly tacky. Perhaps more or less flour would be needed if I used a different brand. Perhaps kneading by hand instead of with a stand mixer and a dough hook would change the results. Really, I’m happy to keep the recipe somewhat flexible so that bread can be made the way the bread maker likes to make it.

 

This dough could probably take in some other flavors, such as cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice. You could also use a different dried fruit, such as craisins, or chopped dates, figs, or apricots, or a mixture of any of those. Nuts could be mixed in, too. I liked the sweetness of this recipe, though you may be able to back off the honey, or replace it with another sweetener, with some minor adjustments to the flour content. You could probably put some whole grain flour in as well.

The butter keeps the bread soft as well as rich, making it a lovely breakfast or afternoon snack. It also makes pretty fabulous French toast. Bread pudding would be great, too. This is a good one to have in your recipe file for tinkering. Or just eating plain, lightly toasted and gently buttered.

Honey Raisin Bread

If you do not want to use a stand mixer to mix and knead the bread, you can mix it in a large bowl and knead by hand on a floured surface.

1 cup milk

¼ cup unsalted butter

¼ cup honey

2 ¼ teaspoon (1 envelope) active dry yeast

3 cups bread flour, or more as needed, divided

1 teaspoon fine salt

¾ cup raisins

1. Combine the milk and butter and heat until the milk is about 100 F. The butter does not need to be completely melted. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer.

2. Stir in the honey and yeast. Let stand about 5 minutes, or until the yeast is foamy.

3. Add about 1 ½ cups flour and mix with the paddle attachment to make a batter. Cover the bowl with a towel and let stand for 15-30 minutes. The mixture should be risen and puffy in appearance.

4. Sprinkle the salt over the dough. Add about half of the remaining flour. Knead on medium-low speed using the dough hook. Continue adding the remaining flour and kneading it in to make a smooth and elastic dough that is still slightly tacky. This will take about 10 minutes of kneading time.

5. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead in the raisins by hand to distribute them evenly.

6. Spray a large bowl with cooking spray, or grease it as desired. Shape the dough into a smooth ball and place it in the prepared bowl. Spray or grease the dough ball. Cover the dough loosely with a sheet of plastic wrap. Cover the bowl with a towel. Let stand for about 1 hour, or until roughly doubled in size.

7. Gently deflate the dough and reshape it into a ball. Let stand 5 minutes. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper. Shape the dough into a log and place it on the baking sheet. Cover loosely with a towel.

8. Let the shaped dough rise for about 1 hour or until roughly doubled in size. Preheat oven to 350 F.

9. Slash the dough in several places with a sharp blade. Bake at 350 F for 40-45 minutes or until the bread is golden brown and the bread sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool completely.

Makes about 12 servings.

Other recipes like this one: White Sandwich Bread, Rosemary Raisin Rye Bread, Hazelnut and Cranberry Bread with Sage, Cinnamon Graham Bread with Cranberries and Pecans