Time for a cookie recipe! I like bar cookies, especially in summer, because they are so quick and easy to make. The oven is not on for long, and a 13x9 pan usually yields at least 24 bars.
These Salted Butterscotch Bars come from Jocelyn at Inside BruCrew Life. I've shared before how much I appreciate Jocelyn's recipes. She has a great instinct about putting flavors together and what's going to work in a recipe, plus she keeps the recipes simple.
The bars are made with melted butterscotch chips and brown sugar, along with basic ingredients like butter, eggs, flour, vanilla and salt. The frosting is made with salted caramel chips (or, if you can't find those, more butterscotch chips) and whipping cream, plus coarse sea salt for the garnish.
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| Photo from Inside Brucrew Life |
Hope you enjoy this recipe if you try it!
This is one of those times. This Jingle Bells fabric by Lindsay Wilkes, in a gorgeous vintage green color called "Cottage", just checks all the boxes for me. The classic bells, embellished with ribbon and pine, the retro green -- well, I just love everything about it.
This fabric would make lovely pillow covers or even a tree skirt. Maybe a table runner or place mats. What would you make with this lovely Christmas fabric?
It's a limited edition -- only available while supplies last! -- and this is the description: "This juicy caffeine-free herbal blend has a base of sweet-tart ruby hibiscus and cranberries and finishes with a touch of yuletide spice."
These are the ingredients: Hibiscus, cinnamon, ginger, carob bits, apple bits, sweet blackberry leaves, cardamom seeds, natural flavors, chicory root, pepper, cloves, cranberry bits and star anise.
What an amazing blend of flavors! It sounds so delicious for a hot July day, don't you agree?
Inside the card is the message "May Christmas be merry And gay with good-cheer, And may you be happy Through all the New Year!" in black in the same pretty vintage font. There is a poinsettia and sprays of holly at bottom right, setting off the words. At the top and right is the suggestion of the edges of the allbum pages. An army corporal has signed the card in blue ink.
On the back of the card, the corporal has written a note in the same blue ink.
I love the old-fashioned flavor of molasses in baked goods. Growing up, the only way milk tasted good to me was to stir in a spoonful of molasses.
Many older Christmas recipes for cookies and cakes call for molasses, which is a plus in my book.
As my friend and I chatted I mentioned that I like the Crosby's molasses, a Canadian brand which our local supermarkets sell. She was not familiar with the brand, so I looked up the website to send her a link. In so doing, I discovered that Crosby's has a nice variety of recipe e-books. You can check them out here: Crosby e-books.
Today I just want to share one of the recipe books. This one is called simply The Holiday Book. Here's a screenshot.
There’s an appealing nostalgia around
molasses. The word alone is rich with
memories of cozy kitchens and warming food:
a slice of gingerbread with butterscotch sauce,
warm buttery biscuits drizzled with molasses,
crispy gingersnaps dunked in hot cocoa...
There are 23 recipes in this ebook, and more than half are cookie recipes. There are also recipes for candy, snacks, and a couple of beverages. The cookies pictured on the cover are Peanut Butter Molasses Cookies. The cookie recipe that caught my eye is a molasses cookie stuffed with cut-up Lindt white chocolate truffles! Not anything I would have thought of doing, but they look delicious.
If you enjoy baking with molasses at the holidays, you will want to download this ebook!
Last winter our old nut chopper bit the dust. Unbeknownst to us, the threads at the top of the glass jar began to disintegrate. The way we discovered this was somewhat disconcerting. We had made some coffee cakes over the Christmas season, and had frozen the leftover squares of various coffee cakes. Enjoying a snack of these leftovers one evening, we came upon small shards of glass in the nut topping on one of them. It took a bit of detective work and careful inspection of the nut chopper to figure out the source of the problem.
We immediately threw our nut chopper away (along with the remaining squares of that coffee cake!). If we've needed chopped nuts for anything, I've used a handheld metal chopper that we've had for years. But I knew that we were going to need to find a good replacement before any Christmas baking could begin.
Fast-forward to June. Friends suggested a day trip to the Vermont Country Store in Weston, Vermont. And -- although we weren't specifically looking for one as we browsed -- there we found this nut chopper that was just what we've been looking for.
The quality looked good and the price was right. It feels good to have that detail for Christmas baking all taken care of so far ahead of time!
Photo from Pixabay Time for this month's muffin recipe! I found the recipe for Ginger-Peach Streusel Muffins in a free issue of Rea...
