Granola bars

 

Last night after Ben went to bed I decided to make granola bars.  I'm not normally drawn to granola, but the kicker with these is the wordy "chewy."  I am not tempted by crunchy granola, but anything chewy with oats sends me to seventh heaven.  I wanted to make the granola bars at night so they'd be cool by breakfast time.  I have a tendency to get too excited to try my cooking experiments and cut into them before they're cool.  This happened with the chocolate peanut butter fudge, which led to a crumbly mess.  By making the granola the night before, when I was still full from dinner, they had a good 8 hours to cool before I attacked them with a knife.  And, as a bonus, I went to sleep with the smell of cinnamon and toasted oatmeal wafting through the air.

This morning I was lazing in bed, trying to convince myself to get up, when I remembered the granola bars waiting downstairs.  I could barely convince myself to wait the two minutes it takes to brush my teeth before diving in.  The granola bars lived up to their awesome aroma and taste fantastic.  I used almond butter, maple syrup, almonds, hazelnuts, dried cherries, dried apricots, and just a small handful of raisins.  I find that too many raisins can overpower the other flavors, but with just a handful they played nicely with the other ingredients, and the apricots added a pleasant sour counterpoint.  Despite the double dose of almonds, the dominant flavor is of hazelnuts, which almost makes me wish I'd added their perfect partner: chocolate chips.  But if I had, I couldn't pretend these were a breakfast food - they would be relegated to dessert.  Which, come to think of it, is a great use for these granola bars.  With different flavors, or even as is, they'd make a great and semi-healthy bar cookie.

I like that these granola bars are so flexible - I just threw in what I could find in my cupboard.  I also like that with small tweaks (gluten free oats, oil instead of butter) they become gluten and dairy free.  I am keeping them in an airtight container, and whatever I don't eat today will go into the freezer.  Then I can throw them in my lunch, and, if the stars are aligned, they will be defrosted and back to their chewy selves by the time I'm ready to eat.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

Yesterday I was reading Daddy-Long-Legs, and the protagonist Judy went to a taffy pull.  Just reading the word "taffy" put me in the mood to make candy, so I took Jane Sharrock's Who Wants Candy? down from the shelf and started browsing.  I settled on making a chocolate peanut butter fudge to send to my sister and brother-in-law since she likes chocolate fudge and he likes peanut butter fudge.  The book has three recipes for chocolate peanut butter fudge, but I settled on Classic Combo Fudge because I wanted to use real peanut butter, not peanut butter chips, and because I wanted more than the "hint" of peanut flavor in the Fancy Chocolate Fudge.  This is my first marshmallow fudge, and I think it turned out well.  The cocoa powder gave a good kick of chocolate, and I used natural peanut butter rather than ultra-processed Skippy and Jif, so it has a strong peanut flavor as well. 

As the fudge bubbled away, the temperature stalled around 215 F.  I needed the temperature to get up to 234-240 with 236 recommended, and since it's rainy out I decided to go all the way to 240 to cook out a little of the extra moisture in the air (I may have over compensated a bit - the fudge is a little too dry).  I noticed as the fudge cooked that different stirring styles made the thermometer move up or down.  A fast stir would drop the temperature as I incorporated cool air into the hot liquid.  Slower stirs mixed the hottest fudge on the bottom of the pan in with the cooler areas toward the top and ended up raising the temperature.  I settled on a method of slowly stirring the fudge for several minutes, then leaving it for a few minutes to do another task, then returning to a slow stir.  This method made the fudge cook at a fairly constant and still slow rate, which is necessary for good candy, but also gave it a little kick-start when the thermometer seemed to stall.