Exceedingly Mundane

I’ve been on a mini baking spree lately. Not as much as I used to bake, years ago… but then again, we’re trying to watch what we eat and not go overboard. I used to bake a lot more than I do now. When Tim worked full-time in the office, I baked fairly often. We could have a taste or two, and then he could take the rest in to the office. He used to tell me, “they love to see me coming in with that Tupperware container under my arm”. That always made me really happy! 🙂

I made a loaf of banana bread a couple of weeks ago, then last weekend, I made some Buttermilk Whole Wheat Bread. I use my bread machine for the dough, then take it out, knead and shape, then let it rise again in the loaf pan. We like bread better that way (I think Tim loves to smell it baking in the oven, and you don’t get as much of that with the machine doing the whole thing).

I’ve also made this bar cookie two or three times in the past couple of weeks, and we really like them. I “found” that I had a couple of bags of butterscotch chips in my freezer, and they worked wonderfully in this recipe. I want to make it sometime with either cinnamon chips or semisweet.

They’re called “No-Fail Pan Cookies”. I found the recipe on Anna’s blog – Cookie Madness. Here’s a photo of mine in the pan; I didn’t take a photo of them cut out. They don’t rise much, so they look sort of flat. But, boy, they have a great flavor! We really like them. As always, be sure to read my notes at the bottom, although I didn’t really make any changes to this one. It’s simple and easy and good just the way it is 🙂

I just posted the recipe on our main site, Hambones.org. Click here to get the recipe, and I’ll also paste it on the extended page.

Happy Baking!

No Fail Pan Cookies

3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup brown sugar — packed
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
3/4 cups your favorite flavor chips (butterscotch, chocolate chips, bittersweet)
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 inch square metal pan with non-stick foil.

Thoroughly stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt butter on high for 1 minute. Add brown sugar and stir well. Stir in the egg and vanilla and beat 15 strokes with a mixing spoon.

Add flour mixture to sugar mixture and stir just until mixed. Mixture will still be very warm so let it cool for 5 minutes. Stir in chips.

Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and bars appear set (edges will be brown).

Let cool for about 20 minutes. Lift from pan and slice into 16 bars

Stacy’s Notes – First made these Feb 2008. I used everything as listed (except I don’t have non-stick foil, just sprayed regular foil) and I used butterscotch chips from my freezer. These were really good! In my oven, these baked for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, then I turned the oven off and put them back in for the last 5 minutes. I did check with a toothpick at the end to make sure they were done. These bar cookies are pretty flat, but have a really good butterscotch-y flavor. I have a lot of butterscotch chips to use, but I do want to try them with other flavors of chips (like cinnamon and semi sweet). I’ve made these several times and we love them. They’re a good size for us, 16 small squares in the 8″ square pan.

NOTES : from Anna Ginsberg’s blog. She said — “This is a simple pan/bar cookie, but you can jazz is up by using different types of chips. I used a combination of cinnamon and chocolate chips, but you can use butterscotch, bittersweet chips, dark – whatever is on hand.”