Peanut M&M Cookie Bars

Yes. These. These are my Peanut M&M cookies in a bar form. Identical batter, but a lot less time and fuss. They are chewy, so they do lack that cookie crunch, but they taste delicious nonetheless. I can't decide which I like better, in truth, but I know for certain that when I am short on time, I will definitely be making the bars.  I gave a detailed workflow of preparing the batter in my cookie post, so I won't rehash it here. Instead, I will pick up the recipe where it diverges from the cookie recipe:

Chocolate Peppermint M&M Bars (Easy Things to Do with Cake Mix #4)

Better late than never! This is a Christmas recipe, three months late. Which means, in fact, that I am getting worse, because my Thanksgiving recipes were only two months late. Oh well.

Incidentally, I think I'm going to change the tagline of my blog to: "Good food...crappy pictures." Seriously. I have no sense of artistry. I snap my pics on my iPhone, in my garish kitchen light, on a messy counter, on a paper plate. If there are Seven Deadly Sins of Food Photography, I commit them all. Simultaneously.

But, don't let my lack of artistic flair deter you from making these bars, because they are super quick and yummy. And like Thanksgiving, with my new kiddo, quick and easy was the name of the game this year.

Blueberry Crumb Bars

When I was little, my Yia-Yia's backyard was completely lined with blueberry bushes, and one of my favorite childhood memories is going out into her backyard with her to pick berries, so blueberries have been one of my favorites my whole life.

Although I love blueberry pie, I really wanted to try something different with the berries this time, and I found a great recipe for blueberry bars on Smitten Kitchen's fabulous site. If you've never visited her site, please do, it puts mine to shame. I only wish I was as creative of a baker, and as talented of a photographer.

But anyway, these bars attracted me because they seemed simple and straightforward, and yet big on taste. I have very little spare time, so I try to get the biggest baking bang for my buck, so to speak, and this recipe looked like it fit the bill.

Strawberry Rhubarb Oat Bars

I've had an unintentionally long hiatus from posting recipes. That is a combination of moving, working two jobs, and being pregnant. The frustrating this is  it's not so much finding the time to cook or bake (although I'm not doing either as often as I would like) as it is finding the time to organize and post a well thought-out entry. But I finally sat down today to write the first of about 30 some-odd entries that I have had back-logged and in the posting queue since last summer, so I'm posting these out of chronological order, but according to the season we are currently in, if that makes sense. I have about 6 baking entries that I consider "summer themed' so I am going to try to bang out as many of those posts as I can before the end of August.

I also have a huge number of backlogged cooking posts from the farm share I had last summer, which I suppose are "summer themed" as well, but I'd rather get the baking ones out of the way first, since I tend to be more enthusiastic about my baking than about my cooking.

Strawberry and rhubarb is one of my favorite summer flavor combinations, and this is not the first strawberry-rhubarb dessert I've posted on this blog, but it might just be my favorite. This particular recipe is a relatively simple bar recipe which I modified from a post on landolakes.com (don't ask how I ended up there browsing, I can't remember for the life of me!)

Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie Bars

This is my second recent posting on pecan bars, and it is a recipe I have been wanting to try forever: a shortbread-based pecan pie bar. My previous pecan bars from a cake mix, while tasty, were not quite what I had in mind, so I decided to start from scratch, and make my own recipe. And this time, I decided to do something I had never done with pecans before: add some bourbon.

Now, bourbon has a long history of being paired with pecans in pecan pie, although how long, no one knows for sure. For certain, it is a Southern tradition. Bourbon, the drink, is named after Old Bourbon (present day Bourbon County) in Kentucky, the place associated with its invention. To this day, 95% of the world's bourbon comes from Kentucky, and the export of bourbon to the rest of the world is a billion dollar industry.

This recipe starts with the creation of a shortbread crust. I did this all in my food processor today, but I've made this dough before (for thumbprint cookies) in my mixer. Both work fine, so don't worry if you don't have a food processor. I have included directions for making with a mixer in the printable recipe at the bottom of the post.

Raspberry Oat Bars (Easy Things to do with Cake Mix #2)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently baking my way through some of the excess baking supplies I purchased during the holidays, most notably several boxes of yellow cake mix. If the pecan cake bars of my previous post were easy, this next recipe is still easier, and quite tasty. It has a great fruit flavor, which makes it a perfect bar to make now that the weather is (supposed to be) getting warmer. It flurried by my house this morning, and I heard on the radio that there was 6" of snow on the ground in Bergen County. So maybe these bars can make you feel like Spring is coming (so long as you don't look out the window or go outside).

Pecan Chocolate Cake Bars (Easy things to do with cake mix #1)

This post is short and sweet. After Christmas, I was left with an excess of certain baking ingredients that I intended to use over the holiday but never did. Things like 4 boxes of yellow cake mix, 2 boxes of pumpkin bread mix, 1 box of red velvet cake mix, 2 bags of bright red candy wafers, 2 huge jars of marshmallow fluff, a box of graham cracker crumbs, bags of chopped pecans, gads and gads of bittersweet chocolate chips, and 3 cans of pumpkin. Now, my apartment is the size of a shoebox, which makes my closet about the size of a postage stamp. I just can't possibly horde baking ingredients forever. Well, actually...I probably could, but according to my horrified husband, I just can't possibly horde baking ingredients forever. So I need to use up my supplies, pronto.

Red velvet cake mix and red wafers are already gone, as Valentine's Day cupcakes with red molded chocolate decorations on top. I made the pumpkin bread last week, and sprinkled on some pecans. One box of yellow cake mix had a hole in the plastic holding the mix, so when I went to open up the box, it poofed all over my clothes. Said box is now in the trash, potential morph into baked goodness unfulfilled. So sad.

But this is the story of Yellow Cake Mix #2.

Yellow Cake Mix #2 has become Easy Things to do With Cake Mix #1. Still with me? Good. This yellow cake mix was destined for great things, although not the thing I thought it was destined for. I thought it was destined to become a yummy pecan pie bar, like a shortbread bar with a buttery crust.  But instead, it turned out to be more of a yummy pecan cake, and I'm advertising it as such.

Key Lime Coconut Crumb Bars

My husband and I have this  deal, you see. He really isn’t into sweets, which is rather unfortunate since all I know how to do is bake.  He will, however, make an exception for several things that incorporate fruit, such as the thumbprint cookies from a previous posting. I promised, in keeping with the theme of the approaching summer, that all of my baking would include fruit until at least the end of August.
 

So when I saw this recipe on the Pioneer Woman Cooks, I knew I had to try it. After all, it’s Ree Drummond.  Have you met Ree? If not, then head on over to The Pioneer Woman ASAP. You’ll thank me. Not only does she bake, she cooks, and her recipes are insanely good, her writing is always entertaining, and her photos are gorgeous. 

Anyway, on Ree’s site, there was this darling recipe for lemon crumb squares. And it caught my eye, because I was just talking about lemon squares with my mother the other week. But we were talking about more traditional shortbread-bottomed, cooked pudding-topped lemon squares. Ree’s recipe is a variation that uses two layers of crumbs that are cousins to coffee cake crumbs, except without cinnamon…and way denser…and with oatmeal...with a delicious layer of lemon sandwiched between them. And then, the clincher:  Ree casually mentions at the bottom of her post that the recipe would also work for key limes.