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Sunday, December 10, 2006

Christmas Cookie #3: Rocky Ledge Bars

Number three on our list is a cookie selected by my oldest son. These are chock-full of all kinds of goodies and can easily be tweaked to your own tastes and preferences. DS wanted to do the recipe as written, so we stuck to what was already listed. Personally, I'm not crazy about white or butterscotch chips, I probably would have used peanut butter chips and toffee chips instead, but these were for DS, so I kept my preferences to myself.

DS did most of the work on these himself and did a great job. There was one alarming moment, however, when he asked, "Mom, do you measure baking powder like you measure flour?". As in, spooning it in the cup and leveling with a knife. I asked, "How much baking powder does it call for?????!". "2 1/4 cups." "Uh, honey, you might want to double check, I think it's probably teaspoons, not cups!" He got a giggle out of that and then asked what would have happened had he used that much baking powder. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure they would have been very, very salty and probably inedible!

These are as gooey and as sweet as you might expect. Very tasty, definitely on the sweet side, pretty messy and somewhat difficult to cut. Turns out that I should have baked these at 325º. At 350º, they started to brown too fast and the caramel got quite hard (which is why they were difficult to cut) - I think lowering the oven temperature might solve both of these problems. The recipe says it makes 16 bars, but that's a very big bar for such a rich treat, so we cut ours into about 24 squares. I'd much rather snack on smaller pieces than have one great big bar, so I almost never make giant cookies or cut bars into big pieces.

Coming up soon..........Lemon Squares and Orange-Sable Cookies..............

4 comments:

  1. Those bars were a favorite when we made them back in January for a treat day at Jeff's work - I don't remember the caramel being too hard, but chunky bars can be difficult to cut! I think I noticed them starting to brown pretty fast so I might have covered them with foil before they were done.

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  2. Anonymous1:56 PM

    those are good cookies, alysha...i think your son did a good job. i got a chuckle too about the baking powder! i'm planning to bake a lot of cookies this year and love to see how all yours turn out.

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  3. Anonymous9:39 PM

    Those look good. And, so fun to read that your son is a cook in training. And, what a great teacher. No doubt when he is older, he will certainly know his way around the kithcen.

    Have a great holiday!

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  4. Joe - I'll have to remember to cover them if they get too brown again - why didn't I think of that? :)

    Eliza & Anonymous - It's great fun to have my oldest son in the kitchen with me now - he can do so many things on his own and does a great job. Sometimes I forget to involve him - I still think of him as being little - not 12! My younger one does a great job too. :)

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