Chewy Trail Bars

Lest you think I am the bearer of alternate realities, let me start by begging for your pardon as I begin writing this post.  After I just finished telling you about my near loathing of dried fruit (last month's post), I return to share a wonderful recipe that features...wait...ready???  Dried Fruit!!  I re-thought featuring this recipe since you would deduce that I am not to be believed; however, perhaps it's on me to figure out exactly when I engage with dried fruit?  Apparently I engage more than I thought.  I think it has something to do with whether or not the fruit loses its soft, gooey chew and individual characteristics and unifies with the cookie/bar to the point where it provides moisture and fruity tang, but not its distinct id.  But perhaps I need to chew on this a bit more...

Kitchenality's goal is to share recipes that reflect great flavor, reliability and relative ease of production.  Yes, I feature my favorites with a heavy hand on the sweet parts.  I hope that this posting and its revisit to dried fruits illustrates that I am not as narrow-minded as I thought 😀

Notes

1.  This recipe is slightly time consuming on the front end due to necessary chopping of many of the ingredients.  Mindfulness will help...

2.  I used salted butter even though the mentor recipe used unsalted.  And I used the extra salt as specified in the recipe.  You decide what your adventure will be.

3.  The package of coconut that I use most often is called desiccated coconut.  The difference is in particle size.  Desiccated is smaller-sized than shredded.  For this post, I used a bit of both since that's what I had on hand.

4.  Nope!  I haven't misspelled desiccated 😀

5.  I resisted chopping whole almonds and use sliced almonds instead.  Do it.

6.  I used a small bit of vegetable spray on the baking pan before inserting the parchment paper so that it would stick.

7.  These bars are delightfully chewy, sweet, tangy, and a bit sticky, and could serve as a snack between meals, a dessert, or alongside your morning yogurt for a more complete meal.  They fit many needs.

Chewy Trail Bars
(yield: 16 bars of 2"x 2" size or tailor to your needs)

2 cups quick cooking oats
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt, optional
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup raisins
1 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons melted butter (I used salted)
1 tablespoon water

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350ºF.

2.  Line an 8 x 8 inch baking dish with parchment paper.  Allow for some length to overhang two opposite sides.

3.  In a large bowl, combine everything from the oats to the coconut and set to the side.

4.  In a smaller bowl, whisk the corn syrup, honey, vanilla, melted butter, and water together until combined.

5.  Pour wet ingredients over oat mixture.  Using a spoon or your hands mix the ingredients until well combined.

6.  Press into the square baking pan, smoothing the top with a spatula or an offset spatula.

7.  Place into the oven and bake about 30 minutes until the edges are golden.

8.  Remove to a rack and allow to cool completely.

9.  Using the parchment paper overhang, lift the mixture from the pan, and cut into bars.

10. Wrap uneaten bars and store in airtight container.  Chilling in refrigerator is fine; however, allow bars to come to room temperature before eating.

Sweet Custardy Apple Tart

This is a dessert lacking in... um...nothing.  In fact, if I made this once a week, it would always disappear...just not by me.  Why?  Well... you remember that I adore apples and eat them virtually every day of the year, right?  It's the crispy, juicy, tartness of this fruit that keeps me coming back for more, and I imagine that if there was a count kept of all the raw apples that individuals have eaten in their lifetime, I would win a medal!  That said, I have never been a fan of cooked apples in pies, cakes, bars, etc.  Can you believe that??

A Dorie Greenspan winner, this recipe is featured in her cookbook Baking Chez Moi.  I have made it twice in as many weeks and tweaked it just a bit (see Notes).

A dessert or breakfast treat, this tart can boast about its ease of ingredient assembling.  The mixing is done with whisks!  Imagine that!  Each of three bowls holds either the dry ingredients, the wet ingredients, or the apple slices.  Whisk the wet ingredients, add the dry and mix again, and finally add the apples slices for a good slosh.  All is spread into a pan and baked.  So easy...

I do appreciate aromas, and while this dessert is in the oven, your kitchen will smell like you just opened a high end bakery, and its name should be Apples Baking in Vanilla Custard.  Irresistible and enticing are the words that come to mind, but so do profusely-alluring and how-much-longer-until-this-is-out-of-the-oven?

In addition to the quick prep, the tart can be eaten out of the oven (you might want to cool it a bit first) without any other fuss, (unless you feel a dollop of vanilla ice cream or a dusting of icing sugar count as fuss) and leftovers can be refrigerated if you don't demolish it all at one seating.  And the greatest news on top of all this great news?  Its elegance is remarkable.  Expect oohs and ahs :)

Notes

1.  I have made this in a 9-inch square pan (trial #1) and a 1.5 quart casserole dish (trial #2).  Since the casserole dish's dimensions were smaller, the tart was thicker.  I preferred this result.

2. In trial #1 I used Almond Breeze Coconut/Almond Unsweetened Blend instead of milk since that was what I had.  In trial #2 I used 2% milk.  Each worked well.

3.  I used Fuji apples and Granny Smith.  Both were great :)

4.  Dorie used parchment paper on the buttered-bottom of her baking dish.  This means that to serve the tart, you need to flip the entire pastry over, peel off the parchment, and then flip it back over.  I did  this on trial #1, but just buttered the baking dish on trial #2.  I vote for no parchment paper.  This way you can serve right from the baking dish.  In the photos above, you can see that I cut the tart into fourths and removed with a spatula with no problems.

5.  In both trials, I covered the dishes with foil at around the 20-minute mark as some of the apple pieces were getting too brown.

6.  My husband was my objective taste tester.  He loved both trial results (no surprise here), but did comment on the structure of the apples.  The apples have some 'tooth'.  By that I mean they are soft, but not mushy.  You will need to chew them, but they are not crunchy.  I share this not because his comments were negative, but because his assessments are thorough.  Thank you, honey!

7.  When I make this tart again, I think I will pre-cook the apple slices a little by sautéing them in a bit of butter for a minute or two... just to further soften the texture, and then add them to the custard.  I'll let you know what my husband thinks :)

Sweet Custardy Apple Tart
(from Dorie Greenspan)

3 medium, juicy apples (see notes above)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 tablespoons milk (see notes above) at room temperature
2 tablespoons butter (I used salted), melted and cooled slightly
Confectioner's sugar for dusting (optional)

Directions

1.  Preheat the oven to 400º F.  Butter your baking pan on all sides.
2.  Peel, core, and slice your apples thinly.  Think 1/8" thick, but no thicker.
3.  Place the flour and baking powder into a small bowl and whisk together.
4.  In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together until the sugar is mostly dissolved and the eggs are a bit frothy and pale.  This may take a minute or two.
5.  Into the egg mixture, whisk the vanilla, then the milk, and finally the melted butter.  Continue whisking until the batter is smooth.
6.  Add the flour and baking powder to this batter. Whisk again.

7. Finally, add in the apples. Using a spatula, gently mix until each of the apple slices is coated with the batter.

8.  Scrape the batter into the pan, smoothing the top (maybe even picking up an apple slice to place it more strategically) evenly as best you can.

9.  Bake for 30 - 40 minutes, covering midway through with foil if the top is browning too quickly (see notes).
10.  The tart is done when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
11. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.
12. After 15-20 minutes, cut, plate, and adorn with confectioner's sugar.
13. Leftovers (should you be so lucky) can be chilled.

Three Ingredient Biscuits

My husband and I have a little home on an island in the Puget Sound, and recently we headed there for a little vacation.  Because we live on the east coast, there is quite a bit of preparation necessary for this westward trip, including meal-planning and reviewing the inventory of supplies for re-stocking or replacing.  Groundwork is laid for where we'll shop prior to the flight so that the number of stops for pickup/purchase is minimized once we're on the west coast.  Keeping an up-to-date inventory of household items, both food and otherwise, has been a tremendous help.

The good news is that we are pretty good at planning.  The bad news is that even good thinkers occasionally forget.  And guess what we forgot to purchase on this last trip out?  Hint: sweet, white, and granular.  I can't believe it either, but yup, we forgot to buy sugar.  Yikes!

We had planned to have a good friend over for dinner while vacationing.  And all of the needed ingredients for a couple appetizers and a vegetarian dinner were purchased.  The missing sugar was just for the dessert, but I knew we could plate a couple cheeses and fruit if need be.

Even so, I did have self-rising flour, coconut oil, and powdered milk from which to make something.  I decided that I could bake biscuits...slathered with butter and jam...Bingo!  This could be the dessert ticket.  And anyway, I wanted the cheese plate for the appetizer.  I prepared the dough and put it in the refrigerator so that I could bake it when we were ready for dessert.  Nothing better than hot-out-of-the-oven biscuits, right?

Long story short?  Our friend brought dessert!  A flourless chocolate cake and a container of homemade strawberry jam.  Happy, yummy times!  (And there was no mention of the biscuit dough chilling in the refrigerator.)

The following morning,  I made those biscuits... to go with that leftover jam.  Since I had already prepared the dough the day before, I just needed to remove it from the refrigerator, roll it out and slice it into random shapes (kind of like what I did with the Canistrelli cookies).

Notes

1.  It's hard to believe that you can make a delicious bread from scratch with just 3 ingredients.  Hold onto your hats cuz you can...and should!

2.  If you don't have self-rising flour (c'mon now...I've been throwing my support at this staple since forever), you can use all-purpose flour and add baking powder and salt.  See ingredient list below.  And yes, this then becomes Five Ingredient Biscuits...still a good deal :)

3.  I only had powdered milk, so I reconstituted to make what the recipe needed.

4.  The chilled dough rolls out beautifully.  Cutting random shapes is quick and there are no leftover pieces to re-roll.  What's not to like about that?

Three Ingredient Biscuits
(mentor recipe here)

2 cups self-rising flour (OR use 2 cups all-purpose flour plus 1 T. baking powder and 1 tsp. salt)
1/4 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup milk

Directions

1.  Place the self-rising flour into a bowl (or the all-purpose flour plus additions).
2.  Add the coconut oil and mix with fingers until everything uniformly clumps together when squeezed.
3.  Add milk and mix with a fork until dough just comes together.
4.  Pick up dough and place on a floured surface.  Knead a few times to get it together.
5.  Form into a rectangle (square, circle) an inch thick.
6.  Wrap in saran and chill a few hours or overnight.
7.  When ready to bake, preheat oven to 425º F.
8.  Remove dough from refrigerator, unwrap, and roll out to 1/2 thickness.
9.  Cut into random-sized pieces.

10. Place on a cookie sheet lined with a Silpat, parchment, or greased.
11. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden on the tops.

12. Remove from oven and serve immediately with butter and jam.

Glorious Granola

Let's cut to the chase:  This is seriously worthy granola.  End.of.story.

I know.  You have your own favorite granola and likely it comes from a box!  Well, maybe it is pretty darn good, but your granola has met its match today.  And I contend that Glorious Granola meets sweet standards:

It is flavorful, crispy and crunchy, but not too sweet.
It is so easy to make.  You will need to babysit it a bit while it browns in the oven, but it needs minimal attention.
It is adaptable.  It can grace your yogurt, add new dimension atop your everyday cereal, but frankly it is best on its own with a spoon…a big spoon.
It is forgiving.  You don't have raisins?  Leave them out.  No old-fashioned rolled oats?  Use quick oats instead or even a flake-like cereal.  Don't like almonds?  (You don't?)  Go ahead and put in walnuts, pecans, or even macadamia nuts.  Not enough maple syrup?  No problem.  I subbed in a bit of Mrs. Butterworth's Original and if I didn't admit to it, you'd never know.
It makes enough to give some away (although you won't want to).  We are headed to the west coast late this week, and I'm taking a zip-lock bagful as a gift for the woman who has invited us to stay with her.
It is a thing of beauty.  Really.  It's even more beautiful when you're the creator.

See?  No stress granola. Yum.

I've read a lot of recipes for granola.  Kudos to David Lebovitz, whose "The Best Granola Recipe" adapts Nigella Lawson's recipe with applesauce in place of the some of the oil.  He also adds a bit of plum kernel oil and, according to him, the resulting taste is amazing.  By the way, I probably don't need to tell you that plum kernel oil and I are complete strangers.

Other recipes feature an extensive list of ingredients like ginger, rice syrup, different kinds of seeds, wheat germ, and all kinds of dried fruit.

Enter Alton Brown, whose granola recipe has become my one and only and is so worthy of your attention.

Glorious Granola
adapted from Alton Brown
Yield:  2 pounds

3 cups rolled oats
2 cups nuts (ideas: slivered almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, pecans, macadamia)
3/4 cup shredded, sweetened coconut
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins *
1 cup dried fruit, cut if necessary (ideas: apricots, cranberries, cherries, blueberries)*

Directions

Preheat the oven to 250 º F.
In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients: oats, nuts, coconut, and brown sugar
In another smaller bowl, mix together the maple syrup, vegetable oil, and salt.
Pour liquid mixture onto dry mixture.
Combine with a large spoon, spatula, or your hands.
Pour onto 2 sheet pans (or 1 large cookie sheet) covered with foil for ease of cleanup.
Place into oven and cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve a uniform color.  I removed the cookie sheet from the oven each time I stirred with a spatula.
Remove from oven and pour into a large bowl.  Add raisins and dried fruit and mix.  Let cool.

* I have added the raisins and dried fruit at the end (as this recipe suggests), but also at the beginning with the oat mixture.  I have noticed no difference in taste or texture.  However, you will have two extra cups of volume in the baking portion of the recipe.

All the ingredients are mixed and spread onto cookie sheet that was covered with foil.

The granola is finished and cooling in a bowl.  Notice the golden color.

Packed and ready to transport!