Apple Bars

I'd made these Apple Bars with Oatmeal Crumb Topping to bring to the Groundhog Day party, but they finished baking only a half-hour before we needed to leave for the party. No time to cut them without destroying them, so they were saved for another day.

This handy recipe is from Allysa Torey's More from Magnolia. I've made it before and like it. The recipe is convenient and quick to assemble. It just requires a fairly long baking time (20 minutes to bake the crust, then 45 minutes after it's all assembled). When I make these bars, I always feel a little lazy because canned pie filling is one of the ingredients. I'm certain they'd taste better with a fresh apple filling. That will have to go on my to-do list for a future baking endeavor. One tweak I made this time was to add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the crust, which as written calls for just flour and butter.

Groundhog Day Party

Our friends John and Laura had a Groundhog Day party on Saturday. I volunteered to bring a dessert. I opted to make something easy to eat and that I hoped kids would like: a batch of Banana Granola Cookies (from Jill Snider's Cookies) and a batch of Butterscotch Bars from Cook's Country.

I'd made the Banana Granola Cookies once before. This batch turned out a little flatter. I also added some chocolate chips to the batter, a nice touch. I also frosted them with cream-cheese icing. The Butterscotch Bars were new. I found them to be extremely sweet; I ended up feeling glad I'd cut them into small squares.

Mocha Chip Cupcakes

Lost is back (if only for eight episodes), so Lost Lunch Fridays have resumed at work. To wrap up discussion on the season premiere, I brought along a batch of Mocha Chip Cupcakes, a Greg Patent recipe from Fine Cooking. When I make something really good from a recipe I've had for a long time but have never made, I inevitably end up wondering how I could possibly have bypassed the recipe for so long.

Although the cupcakes contain a little espresso powder, I didn't detect much coffee flavor. However, they are incredibly moist and chocolaty. These cupcakes are topped off with a chocolate-sour cream frosting.

Sweet Potato Pound Cake with Quick Caramel Glaze

I was overdue in making something for my colleague Chuck's birthday. Since I now feel beyond certain that I can't go wrong with Nancie McDermott's Sweet Potato Pound Cake, that's what I made. This time, I tried it with Quick Caramel Glaze. For the glaze, butter, brown sugar, and evaporated milk are cooked just to a boil. Then, confectioners' sugar and vanilla are added, and the glaze is quickly poured over the cake. This glaze sets up really fast, perhaps a bit faster than I was banking on. While the sliced cake looked as appealing as ever, the whole cake looked like it was slathered with spray-foam insulation.

P.S. You can follow this link to the recipe for this cake.

More Chocolate Chip Cookies

For this year's Parent Leadership Training Institute class, I've fallen down on my baking goal. I missed their first two weeks of class. This week, I made up for a bit of lost time with a batch of chocolate-chip cookies, using a tried-and-true recipe from Lauren Chattman's Mom's Big Book of Cookies. I had some leftover dark-chocolate M&Ms, so I used them in the cookies instead of chocolate chips.

I really like this chocolate-chip cookie recipe, but I tinker with the amount of flour in the dough. Generally, I like a cookie that doesn't spread as much, so I add up to 1/2 cup of flour to get a stiffer dough. It doesn't seem to affect the flavor of the cookies, and I end up with a cookie that I think looks better.

Banana Cream Pie With Graham Cracker Crunch

Another fun recipe from Elinor Klivans's new Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook is this banana cream pie. The formula for the graham-cracker crust is set up for excess. Most of the crust mixture (graham-cracker crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, butter, miniature chocolate chips) is pressed into a 9-in.-dia. pie pan. The remainder is shaped into a 8-in. round on a baking sheet, then baked alongside the crust. The bonus crust crisps up into a cookielike treat that is crumbled over the whipped-cream topping that covers the pie's banana-vanilla pudding filling. Completely over the top, totally excessive, and lots of fun.

Lemon and Chocolate Chip Loaf Cake

To commemorate the start of this year's quest to run the five New York City borough half-marathons, a race series sponsored by the New York Road Runners Club, I made Lemon and Chocolate Chip Loaf Cake from Elinor Klivans's new book, The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook. I packed the cake, brought it to Central Park, and shared it with friends who'd also run the Manhattan half-marathon.

This cake is excellent. Lemon and chocolate are an unusual but great partnership. Lemon zest goes in the cake batter; then the finished cake is brushed with lemon syrup while still warm from the oven.