I ran out of time last month and didn't get a chance to join in with Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipe challenge, so I've decided to get in early this month. I went to grab a random book off the shelf and came up with Jo McAuley's Brownies, Bars & Goodies Galore. Whenever I want to bake something with the kids but don't know what, this book ALWAYS comes up with something that appeals to us and usually relies on nothing but store-cupboard basics.
I turned to a random page and discovered Jewelled Cookie Bars. My initial thought was that the recipe was much too simple to warrant entering the random recipe challenge, but I decided it would be cheating to pick another one !
We'd only just finished eating the utterly indulgent Devil's Food Cake from my birthday so I decided to halve the quantities, rather than overload on sugar, butter and chocolate again !
Cream together 9 tbsp butter with 1/2 cup icing sugar. I added a sprinkle of vanilla salt too. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup flour with 1/4 cup dessicated coconut, 1/4 cup raisins and a dash of orange extract.
Combine the two to form a soft dough.
Squish it into a greased tin and bake for 1/2 hour.
Once cooled, you need to drizzle over melted white chocolate. This was the pathetic amount that one bar provided !
That's more like it - a second bar was definitely called for !
Top with a mixture of dried fruit - we used dried cherries, dried cranberries, chopped soft dried apricots and candied peel (to add a bit of colour or they wouldn't have been very jewelled !).
Just to keep the kids happy and add some ooh-factor (and it was actually part of the original recipe), I sprinkled over a few silver balls.
Leave in the fridge for a couple of hours then slice into squares.
So simple but the kids can't get enough of them !
I can't believe how cheap this book is on amazon right now - if you need a Christmas present for someone who likes baking with kids, look no further, grab yourselves a bargain gift !
Other recipes you may be interested in :
simplicity at its best... I love this kind of stuff and books like these, we all them them on our shelves but rarely use them... a fantastic random recipe entry, thanks so much for getting it in so early this month x
ReplyDeleteEven simple recipes are good. That's the fun of Random Recipes!
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