Oatmeal Granola Bars

Last night after work I had the most fabulous evening.  Met a friend in Bryant park for a little to soak up some rays.  Met Jvo for a great Sushi feast in Murray Hill.  Slowly walked my way home and got my life situated. I am trying to organize my life a little bit seeing as we are moving in just 2 short weeks... assuming we ever find an apartment (another post... another time).  Welp, organizing my life consisted of the usual.  You know how it goes, vacuuming, bills to pay.. and of course for this girl- BAKING!

I haven't baked in a while so I was very excited to do so! It is my college reunion this weekend and you know what that means- roadtrip!  So of course, snacks needed to be made.  Yesterday I reached out to the twitter community, specifically some lovely ladies over to help me think of a fun recipe for on the go granola bars to take with me in the car.

Well Anne never fails me and helped me out with these amazing Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Granola Bars.  I made some slight tweaks and they really hit the spot.  As you guys know, I really love my raisins.  More than that, the chocolate and dried fruit combo really hits the spot for me. Well, I guess I kind of failed at the whole Only Eat What You Have Challenge because 2) I didn't have chocolate chips and those were purchased and b) I don't know if going out to dinner with friends counts as following the challenge but I have a sneaking suspicion that it does NOT.  O well, if chocolate and dried fruit does the same for you as it does for me, check out the below!

Ingredients:
2 cups instant oats
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped walnut
1/8 cup chocolate chips
1/8 cup raisins (I went with white raisins to mix things up)
1/8 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/2 cup skim milk
2 tablespoons egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla 

Steps:
1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
2) Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl
3) Combine all wet ingredients in a separate bowl
4) Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix until combined
5) Pour batter into a pam-ed pan (11×7).
6) To make it look pretty- sprinkle raw oats on top
7) Bake for 30 to 40 minutes (depending on how crunchy you want them to be)
8) Remove, let cool and cut into 15 squares.
9) Enjoy!

These are soooo good :)

Not sure how well they will travel but I will find out soon enough, I brought one to work for dessert after my lunch!

I would definitely give them a Star Fabulous Rating of at least 8/10! They are chocolatey and fruity and nice and gooey.

Star Fabulous Rating: 8/10 

My first granola bars with a success- Thanks Anne for sharing your recipe!

Confused Pancake Cookies

It is only because I promised to deliver both the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, that I am writing this post.

As I am sure many of you thoughtful people already know, this week is Administrative Professionals Week!  Our team of fab people over here decided we wanted to show our favorite person in the office how much we appreciated her so everyone got a job!  One woman grabbed a beautiful card, the team ordered a gorgeous orchid and I was in charge of bringing a tasty treat! Being comforted with the fact that I had back-up PB &J Bars, that I knew people would love considering how well they have been received, I took a simple and stable recipe from the fabulous  Tina.. and fiddled... bad move Jessica.

Now before I tell you what changes I made to this easy, simple and classic recipe, I think it is essential to make this note. 

I have learned from experience (ahem... this recipe) that certain classics can only be tweaked to be made healthy so much before you take the tweaking too far.

 

Tina's treats are both scrumptious, and healthy and should have been left alone. 

With that said, here goes nothing. 

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp unsweetened apple sauce

1/3 cup liquid egg whites

1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Steps:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2) Mix all ingredients in one bowl

3) Make into 12 portions and place on pam-ed sheet

4) Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes.

5) Remove cookies from baking sheet and allow to cool

Now it should be said that these cookies did not taste bad by any means.  The problem was simply that replacing all oils and butter (fats) with applesauce unfortunately removed the crumbly delicious texture of  cookies that makes them as good as they are.

The results... according to my taste testers, were that the cookies tasted less like cookies... and more like:

(Picture Source)

Needless to say I did not subject the office to these confused pancakecookies and they are currently under tinfoil on my kitchen counter (hoping maybe they are like Peeps and are a little better stale?)  

The team got exactly what they wanted with the rest of these goodies.

The best thing that came out of this exploration however... I feel a delicious pancake recipe brewing in this dome. 

Now, if treated like cookies, these suckers probably deserved something along the lines of 2 maybe 3 stars on the Star Fabulous Rating System (edible, but hey so is gum, doesn't mean you should swallow it).  I believe it is important, however, to recognize these for what they truly are, no matter the original goal. 

Star Fabulous Rating if treated like Confused PancakeCookies:

Asparagus Prosciutto Pizza

 **Not baking but too delicious not to share**

Last night we had a small shin-dig at my APT with some girlies.  Jvo and I have been planning to have a delish dinner date ever since our extravagant brunch at Friends of a Farmer a couple of weeks back.  She is currently is on an asparagus kick, and anything involving pizza always works for me so we tackled this Asparagus Pizza Recipe with a few slight changes.

We adventured down to Trader Joe's (my main complaint about this city is that there aren't enough Trader Joes'). Grabbed some goodies and headed back to the APT to devour. 20 min later and 17 blocks, we were starving.

The recipe that we used was a little indulgent but definitely worth the splurge! We kinda of winged everything, one of the nice things about cooking is that you can mainly just go with the flow and it will still come out well :)

Ingredients (roughly)

1oz Prosciutto (roughly one package)

Olive oil, for drizzling

1 whole wheat Trader Joe's Pizza dough

1 1/4 cups grated Monterey jack

1 giant block of Fresh Mozzarella (we went with a sort of spicy olive oil marinated block)

6 asparagus stalks

1/2 a sweet onion

2 tablespoons minced garlic

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

10 basil leaves, finely chopped

 The steps to this were very simple and perfect to do with a friend!  Jvo and I split things up and it worked out perfectly!

1) Spread dough over a pam-ed baking sheet and dust with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper

2) Cut onion and saute with olive oil until cooked well but not overly brown

3) place the olive oiled dough into the oven to toast lightly while you...

4) Cut asparagus into small 3 inc pieces

5) Cut mozzarella chunk into small quarter size pieces

6) Pull prosciutto into long thin pieces

7) Chop basil into small crisp pieces

8) Remove dough from the oven and sprinkle garlic evenly throughout

9) Sprinkle Monterey Jack cheese evenly over dough

10) Add asparagus evenly

11) Add Mozzarella evenly

12) Add Prosciutto evenly

13) Top with basil!

 (deliciousness before we threw it in the oven!)

14) Put in over for 20 to 35 minutes until edges start to brown.

15) Dig in!

This recipe made PLENTY of food.  Four starving girls (roommate and roommate's fred were stuffed and there was enough for Jvo to take home for lunch today. Perfect.

What better way to end a scrumptious salty meal then with a delicious sweet treat! We dominated my PB&J Bars and then all were comfortably stuffed until about... right now.