Oatmeal Fudge Bars

When it comes to the world of chocolate, I like it rich and dark. I have come to like a little bit of milk chocolate, but give me a choice between the two, and I will greedily take the dark chocolate bar. Plus I can’t resist the crisp snap dark chocolate makes when you break it in two.

Oats have a special place in my heart too. I have Quaker instant maple and brown sugar oatmeal for breakfast at least three times a week. Yes I know it’s not as healthy as actually making oatmeal from scratch, but I don’t care. It’s sweet and chewy and delicious. I will admit that I make oatmeal from scratch on occasion. I can’t resist the mouth feel oatmeal provides.

I’m also a fan of crunchies. Ever since I was little I would love a good crunchy chicken finger or granola bar. Plus, crumble toppings are my weakness. They are so sweet and crunchy and just amazing on anything.

These bars have every single component I mentioned above. It has am oaty base, which browns and crisps up beautifully as it bakes. The middle layer consists of pure decadence. It’s rich, dark, and ever so smooth, yet fudgy too. The middle layer of this bar is basically a brownie, but sort of like a chocolate pie filling. It’s heavenly. Then the top layer is made of leftover base crumbled all over the smooth chocolate layer.

Warning: this treat is very rich and highly addicting. It’s absolutely perfect for small get-togethers.

This post is part of the 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats, hosted this year by the wonderful Brenda of Meal Planning Magic.

Oatmeal Fudge Bars

Slightly adapted from Tracy’s Culinary Adventures

Makes one 9-icnh square pan

Ingredients

Base and Crumble

1 cup quick cooking oats

1 cup brown sugar

¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. baking soda

1/8 tsp. salt

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

Filling

¼ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ tsp. salt

9 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, chopped or chips

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

1 egg, room temperature

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325F. Line a 9-inch square baking pan with foil. Grease the foil with cooking spray. Set the pan aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the oats, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pour in the melted butter and mix until the dough comes together. Set aside about ½ cup of the oat mixture. Pour the remaining dough into the prepared pan, pressing down to create an even layer.

Bake for 8 minutes or until just slightly golden on top. Set the pan aside to cool for 1 hour while you make the filling.

Whisk together the flour, brown sugar, and salt. Melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler. Stir until the chocolate and butter have completely melted into each other. Let the chocolate cool for about 5 minutes. Beat in the egg. Fold in the flour mixture. The filling will be thick. Pour the filling over the partially baked base. Smooth over the top with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle the remaining oat mixture on top.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the oat crumble has turned a golden brown. Place the pan on a cooling rack to cool completely (2 hours). Cut into squares. 

Brown Sugar Oatmeal Scones

Have you ever had one of those weeks that no matter how much stuff you’ve got going on, more stuff just seems to keep piling on until you feel that you just can’t get everything done on time? That’s been my week. And I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in a long time, but I meant to, honest.

Last week I was going to update the blog with a nice flourless chocolate cookie recipe I found over on Shared Sugar, but, it kind of flopped. I could not get those silly things to bake all the way through, no matter what I did! After what seemed like 30 minutes of baking, I eventually just turned off the oven and let them sit (they still weren’t cooked). It was like a lava cake, only in cookie form. However, that does sound like a good concept.

Anyways, I wont keep you waiting from these scones. Well, at least I think they are scones. You see, I’ve never had a scone before. I’ve seen many a scone though. I see them all the time in the plastic containers at the grocery stores and I see them on my occasional trip to Starbucks, but I have never eaten one before. I got to thinking what I would make after my cookie fail and scones popped into my mind. I’ve really been in the mood for brown sugar, so naturally I googled “brown Sugar Scones”. I’ve got this thing where, if I look something up on the internet and I click a recipe, I bookmark it and “shop” around some more for other recipes. The weird thing about that is that I almost always go back to that first recipe. This recipe was no exception.

Like I said before, I’m not sure if these are actually scones because there is no butter in the recipe (unless you count the melted butter brushed on top). But is that what makes a scone a scone? I don’t know.

Whatever they are, they are sweet little things. I don’t mean sweet like sugary sweet, I mean like delicate and delectable kind of sweet. These scones had only been in the oven for five minutes before I could smell the brown sugar, wafting through the air. I kept checking on them, turning the oven light on and off, just to make sure my little darlings were cooking all the way through. They even finished a little early. The outer shell was a nice, golden brown color with a little dusting of white sugar. When I broke one of them open, I could see a little steam rising from the center and it called to me. It told me to take a bite, and I did. The pillowy interior was so soft, warm, and inviting. I loved breaking it off in little pieces and eating it that way. The outer shell was the best part though, I think it had more brown sugary flavor than the center. Plus, the crust is the best part of anything, isn’t it?

Brown Sugar Oat Scones
slightly adapted from The Cilantropist

Ingredients
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup rolled oats (not instant)
2/3 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup milk
1 tbsp butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder, salt, brown sugar, and oats. Slowly add in the milk, stirring constantly. The dough will start to become very sticky, so if you need to, use your hands for the mixing.
3. Turn the dough onto a well floured surface, and I mean well floured, this dough will stick if you don’t flour your countertop. Knead the dough for about a minute, just to make sure it is well combined. Put a little bit of flour onto your hands and shape the dough into a circle or rectangle. Take a 2 inch round biscuit cutter (or you can cut your circle into triangles or rectangle into squares) and press into the dough. You may need to flour the cutter a little if the dough happens to be extra sticky. Shake the dough out of the cutter and place on the prepared baking tray. With the left over dough, just knead it a few more times and repeat, repeat, repeat!
4. Place the dough circles about an inch or inch and a half apart. I got 12 two inch scones from this recipe, so arrange then in a manner where you can fit them all onto one baking tray. Next, brush a little bit of the melted butter on the tops and sprinkle with either oats, brown sugar, or granulated sugar. If you want, you can even do a combo, or no garnishing at all, it’s your preference. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the tops are golden brown. If you want to double check, insert a toothpick in the side, and if it comes out clean, they’re done.
5. Transfer the tray onto an awaiting cooling rack and let the scones cool while still on the tray for a few minutes. Then, take the scones off of the tray and let them finish cooling on the cooling rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. I highly recommend serving them warm. If you need to microwave it, microwave the scone at a low setting for 10 seconds. Spread with butter or jam, or just eat it plain, they are good either way.

My, My, Oatmeal Pie

I love oatmeal. It is probably the most delicious thing on the planet. I believe I have Quaker Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal at least five out of the seven days of the week. My hands are always cold and in the morning it’s nice to just hold that nice warm bowl of hot oatmeal and then slowly eat it, which in turn makes my body feel all cozy. Now, I love oatmeal in many forms: as breakfast, as dinner, sometimes lunch, streusel, especially as a cookie, but what about pie?

The idea came to me in the beginning of the week as I was having my daily bowl of oatmeal. I am not your typical fruit pie find of gal, in fact, I hate chunks (well fruit chunks that it) and I just don’t like fruit either, so I like the idea of cream pies, pumpkin pies, cinnamon pies, etc. Oatmeal is very versatile, I think, and so I Googled oatmeal pie and low and behold, I found a few recipes for oatmeal pie. However, some I just didn’t get the right feeling about and usually when I find a recipe I like, I favorite it and then go searching, only to come back to the first one I liked. That’s why I stuck with this recipe for Maple Oatmeal Pie.

I liked the ingredients, but it lacked directions and I’m one of those people that need everything written out for them step by step (yay visual learners!). So I kinda of had to improvise with the directions, but this recipe also called for a heck of a lot of honey, and not a whole bunch of maple and I’ll choose maple over honey any day, so I decreased the amount of honey and increased the amount of maple syrup. I also had to decrease the amount of butter by a tablespoon, because I was short on it. Now, this pie GREW! I was expecting it to just kinda sit there with about an inch of crust peaking out, but noooo. This thing grew as if I had put some kind of extra strength leavening in it.

I planned on having this pie for lunch, but as it was cooking, the minutes were going by and I was getting so hungry, that I decided to eat some lunch and instead of having a few granola bars to compliment my usual sandwich, I would have the pie. This was a pretty good pie, I must admit. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t not make some changes. First change, is add some more flavor to the crust. I wonder if it’s ok to add some vanilla to crust to make it taste better. Second thing is, I think I would use quick cooking oats instead of old fashioned oats, it might make the pie a little more tender. Third, not that the honey didn’t add a nice touch, it did, but maybe I would switch out the honey with some brown sugar, you can’t go wrong with brown sugar!

Below you will also find the recipe I used for the crust, but you can buy store bought crust. I was just getting frustrated because pie crusts don't come in single packages, but the 2 pie crust package. Stupid :P

At this point, I was thinking that maybe I needed more oats because there were some problems with the liquid to oat ratio.

However, it turned out just fine and looked lovely. Even my sister said she might think about maybe trying it, and she hates pie.

 

Yummy yummy pie.

Maple Oatmeal Pie
slightly adapted from A Cozy Kitchen
serves 8

Ingredients
1 unbaked pie shell
3 tbsp butter
½ cup honey
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
2 eggs
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
1 cup uncooked oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line pie pan with uncooked pie crust and set aside
2. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter. Slowly add in the honey and then the maple syrup until well incorporated. Add in the eggs one at a time, making sure that one is fulled mixed in before adding the second. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, salt and stir in the oats.
3. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes so the oats have a chance to absorb the liquid mixture. In the mean time, if you are obsessed with having the kitchen clean like I am, you can take advantage of this and clean up the mess.
4. Pour into pie plate and bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until the pie is set.
5. Cool on a wire rack for 10-20 minutes and once it's cool, you can cut into the pie and serve.

Pie Crust
halved from Land O Lakes
makes 1 9 inch pie crust

Ingredients
1 cup flour
1/8 tsp salt
5 tbsp unsalted butter
4-5 tbsp cold water

Directions

1. Combine the flour and salt. Cut out small chunks of butter into the flour and, using your hands (or food processor) mix in the butter until the flour looks like coarse crumbs. Add in the water by tablespoons until the dough forms a nice bowl.
2. No need to refrigerate this dough, it works better if it is slightly cold, but not far off from room temp. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out into a 12 inch circle. I can never get it looking right, or have the correct size, so I just roll until it can't be rolled no more.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1/8 pie
Calories 299.1 Total Fat 13.0 g Saturated Fat 0.5 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.5 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.8 g Cholesterol 76.3 mg Sodium 135.5 mg Potassium 38.6 mg Total Carbohydrate 34.9 g 1.6 g Sugars 25.5 g Protein 13.3 g

Christmas Morning Maple Muffins - and a long story

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, I did! :D I even got two pie plates from my mom and I’ve already decided what pie I’m going to make, so stay tuned for that in the weeks to come.

So I got the notion in my head that I would make everyone a Christmas breakfast for when we were done opening presents and the decision came down to two things: Maple Oat Muffins and Cinnamon Rolls, and as you can see from the title of this blog I chose the muffins, but here’s why. I took a poll in my family on who wanted what; I wanted the muffins, my dad wanted both and my mom and sister wanted the cinnamon rolls so I decided to make the cinnamon rolls for breakfast, BUT I would make the maple oat muffins for the Christmas lunch because I love to get things my way sometimes. :) Well I got up at 6am and got all of the ingredients together and read the directions carefully and adaptations because I didn’t have a bread maker I had to improvise off of other’s comments. By around 6:30 I got started, making sure not to wake anyone. Right off the bat I knew something was wrong because the yeast wasn’t dissolving, but I continued on anyways. After 45 minutes of waiting the dough never rose and I got impatient and my dad was up and it was only a matter of time before my mom and sister, Emily would be too. I got out the ingredients for the maple oat muffins and got to work. Needless to say they were ready by the time our presents were opened and we were all ready for breakfast. These were the most amazing things ever. I wish I could taste a little more of the maple flavor but in the end I loved them! I had two for breakfast and I think Emily had about 5, haha. I will definitely be making these again soon!

These muffins went so quickly! I was amazed since nothing

 goes that quickly.

 Mom gave me the idea to put a bow in them, as if they were

Christmas presents. :)

 These were the Cinnamon Rolls i tried to make. It took 2 hours for the

dough to get 1/4 bigger and then another hour after they

were cut to hardly rise at all...

They werent even that good, maybe about a C. Maybe I'll try the

recipe again...but not anytime soon.

Mape Oat Muffins

slightly adapted from recipe.com

makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 cup quick-cooking or regular rolled oats

1/2 cup milk

1 cup all-purpose flour (used unbleached)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup chopped pecans (omtied)

Directions

1. Grease twelve 2-1/2-inch muffin cups or line with paper bake cups; set aside. In a medium bowl, combine oats and milk; let stand for 5 minutes. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Make a well in center of flour mixture; set aside.
2. Stir maple syrup, melted butter and egg into oats mixture. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy). Fold half of the pecans into the batter.
3. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each two-thirds full. Sprinkle with remaining nuts. Bake in a 400 degree F oven for 15 to 18 minutes or until tops are golden and a wooden toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from muffin cups; serve warm. Makes 12 muffins.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1 muffin
with/without pecans: Calories 154.4 120.2 Total Fat 4.7 g 1.1 g Saturated Fat 0.6 g 0.3 g Polyunsaturated Fat 1.3 g 0.2 g Monounsaturated Fat 2.4 g 0.4 g Cholesterol 18.5 mg 18.5 mg Sodium 140.4 mg 140.4 mg Potassium 39.1 mg 18.8 mg Total Carbohydrate 26.5 g 25.9 mg Dietary Fiber 1.5 g 1.0 g Sugars 14.4 g 14.2 g Protein 9.1 g 8.7 g