Easy Peanut Buttery Goodness Bars

I apologize for my absence.  I’ve been traveling, well moving, across the country.  We are temporarily settled in Salt Lake City until we decide on a final destination.  In the meantime, I’ll be posting recipes that I threw together before I left.  Most of them will be quick and easy because I didn’t have a lot of spare time around my packing, and today’s is no exception.  These bars come together in just a matter of minutes.  Then they just sit in the fridge overnight and in the morning, you have a chewy, sweet, salty, peanut buttery treat.

Here’s what you’ll need: 

• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup honey
• 3 cups oats
• ¼ - ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla 

Ok, so I didn’t manage to get the salt or vanilla in the picture.  The truth is, I didn’t initially intend to put them in, but decided along the way that they would make a nice addition. 

Here’s a little trick for you.  If you spray your measuring cup with a bit of oil, it will make the honey come out a little easier. 

Now, add the honey to a mixing bowl. 

See, it almost all came out.  Now you can just put the peanut butter in there without even having to scrape it first. 

For the peanut butter, I used a natural one, which had not yet been refrigerated, so it was of pouring consistency.  If you’re using something more conventional or something that has been refrigerated, just warm it in the microwave for a few seconds to make it nice and soft.  You’ll also notice that I’m using a crunchy variety.  I recommend that because of the texture, but you can certainly use whatever you have on hand.  I imagine this would work well with any other kind of nut butter if you have a peanut allergy in your house. 

To that, add the salt and vanilla. 

Stir until everything is thoroughly combined. 

Now it’s time for the oats.  I used a combination of quick oats and old fashioned rolled oats.  Either of those will work just find on their own, but if you have both, the mix makes a really great texture. 

Stir until the oats are evenly coated in the peanut butter mixture. 

Pour into a parchment lined 8x8 pan.  If, like me, you’ve used all of your energy doing something else (I did mention I was packing, right?) and you can’t be bothered to actually lay the parchment neatly in the pan, don’t worry.  Just plop the mixture into the middle of the parchment. 

Then, as you press the mixture down and spread it into the corners, the parchment paper should work itself out. 

Cover this and place it in the fridge overnight.  After that you’ll want to continue to store it in the fridge so they don’t get too sticky.  I was surprised by the fabulous texture of these bars.  They remind me a lot of a chewy, nougat kind of candy bar.  For being so simple, they are amazingly delicious. 

What is your least favorite part about moving?  I'm pretty sure mine is actually the unpacking, but I haven't gotten to that part yet.

Butterscotch Cookies

I’ve got all the ingredients on the counter, all stacked up nicely, and I’m thinking to myself “What am I missing??”

Um, camera. Right. Cooking requires pictures, remember?? In particular, a portrait oriented pretty one of the final product for our Pinterest page. You did know we have a Pinterest page, didn’t you?

Not sure if you remember me, but I used to cook here a while ago, until I went totally crazy with school and got so bad at cooking that I barely managed to make cereal for dinner 3 days a week (the other 4 were cheese and crackers). But, I’m done with the 5 classes a semester thing, and I’m now mere months away from a degree, and someone at work asked me to make Butterscotch cookies.

So I found my camera, bought a hand mixer (it’s been a while, my Popeye arms are out of practice) and started cooking!

Butterscotch Cookies

• ¾ c unsalted butter
• 1 ¾ c darkest brown sugar you can find, like Demerara
• 2 tbsp cream
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• ½ tsp sea salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 ¾ c flour
• ½ tsp baking soda

We’re going to do something a little different than the usual old “cream the butter and sugar and then beat in the eggs” with this one. Butterscotch originated as a hard candy of cooked butter and sugar, so that’s where we’re going to start.

Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat, and let it get all foamy and bubbly.

We’re going to *cook* the butter a bit before we add anything to it. After a minute or two the foam will subside (lifting the pot and gently swirling the butter from time to time will help

     

Once you’ve got a nice clear top, swirl the butter every 30 seconds or so until you start to see little brown spots on the bottom of the pan. Remove the pan from the heat and the burner off.

What you’ve just done is made “beurre noisette” or browned butter. It’s called noisette, the French word for hazelnut, because the aroma gets a little nutty as it browns. You know how when you sauté something until it gets that delicious golden brown colour to it? You just did that to butter.

Dump in the brown sugar and the cream and start whisking. I put mine back on the burner as I whisked, and let the residual heat from the burner help melt the sugar as I decided whether or not I wanted to be risky in the next couple steps.

I was considering proceeding as if making a pate a choux like Taneasha did with the cream puffs. Dump the flour into the hot butter mixture and then add the eggs later. But my Popeye arms are out of practice, and I’m not sure my new little hand mixer can deal with that serious a pastry, so I took the safe route, and dumped the almost butterscotch sauce (add more cream, cook it 10 minutes, pour it over ice cream) into a big bowl.

Beat in the vanilla and salt.

Once it’s cool enough that you can hold your hand on the bottom of the bowl, add the eggs one at a time. Cracking them into a measuring cup first lets you pour them in without risking shells and without stopping the mixer.

Same thing with the flour. Measure into a giant cup, stir in the baking soda, and pour bits at a time into the bowl until you have a sticky ball of dough that pulls away from the sides of the bowl, but that relaxes and puddles a bit when it’s left alone.

In a small bowl, mix about

• ¼ c dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp plain old boring regular sugar
• 1/8 tsp sea salt, if you’re into that kind of thing

Recipe Guy’s sister is all over the salted-caramel trend, but I find most people over do it on the salting part so I generally stay away from it. If you’re not sure you want to go all in, try sprinkling a few grains of salt on top of each cookie after you’ve dipped them. If those work for you, add the salt next time.

Roll tablespoon or so sized balls of dough and dip the top into the sugar-sugar(-salt) mixture.

Bake them at 350 for 11 minutes for cookies that are not browned on the bottom, and have chewy middles. If you want them slightly crisp all the way through, let them go for 13 minutes, but be careful not to let the bottoms get too dark.

The butterscotch flavour is subtle in these; it kind of creeps up on you. It’s a lot more noticeable next to a sip of coffee though. Wow, is it ever! Definitely a breakfast cookie.

What do you think of the salted sweets thing?