Hermit Bars

It seems this is an Early American classic of which every nineteenth-century Cape Cod woman had her own version to send with her sailor-man to sea, so well did it keep. 

I made this recipe because the heroic blogger who baked every single one of Maida’s Book of Great Cookies recipes really liked these, and even sent them on the two-week trip through the post to test their keeping and transport capabilities.

These remind me of Xmas, somehow – maybe reminiscent of the panforte I’ve made for Xmases past. At work, they reminded Our Fearless Leader of her mother’s Lebkuchen.

Adapted from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies, pp 99–100

320g plain flour

¾ teaspoon bicarb soda

¾ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon mace

1/8 teaspoon allspice

120g unsalted butter

100g raw sugar

2 eggs

½ cup molasses (I used blackstrap, which was all I had – tasted like metallic liquorice, so I cut in a third of malt syrup)

140g raisins, soaked for a few minutes in boiling water and drained

115g roughly chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180C. Butter a 13x9 inch slice pan – no, really, butter it, as Maida says. Don’t just ignore that instruction, like I did, and line with baking paper instead, as I always do; no, not for this one.

Sift together all the dry ingredients. Cream the butter, add the sugar and eggs one at a time; beat until smooth. Beat in the molasses, stopping the mixer unless you want black strands of molasses whipped around the bowl and up the mixing shank to be found in all sorts of places afterwards. Add dry ingredients on low speed just until it comes together, and mix in the raisins and walnuts. This is a very thick, heavy dough by now, and Maida’s instruction to spread it smoothly in the pan is easier said than done, especially when you’ve gone ahead and lined the pan with baking paper that slips around everywhere.

Bake for 30 minutes until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed with a fingertip. Mine looked like the surface of the moon, and no springing was going on, but I took it out after 40 minutes regardless – I think it was a tad overcooked and dry.

Get going on the glaze, or have it done before the cake comes out – it needs to be applied while the cake’s still very hot.

150g icing sugar

30g butter, melted

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

3–4 tablespoons boiling water

Place the sugar, butter and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer, or prepare to stir it by hand – in which case, sift the sugar first against lumps. Beat on a low speed while gradually adding just enough of the water to form a medium-thick but pourable consistency.

Pour it over the hot base and brush to cover. It’ll melt into the nooks and crannies and become clearish in parts. Leave it to cool and dry before slicing into squares.

Viennese Chocolate-Walnut Bars

Rich, very rich. Chocolatey, walnutty, shortbready – Maida delivers again.

And otherwise a great opportunity to leave the DSLR in its bag and Instagram with a low-quality phone camera.

Preheat oven to 190C. Line a 20cm square cake pan unless it’s silicon, like mine. Have I mentioned I love my $4 Kmart silicon tin? Then get making the crust.

120g butter

50g dark brown sugar

200g plain flour, sifted

Cream butter in mixer. Beat in dark brown sugar. On low speed, gradually add flour and beat just until the mixture holds together. Press dough evenly across bottom of tin. Bake for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, make filling.

¼ cup raspberry jam

170g walnuts

2 eggs

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

150g dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons dutch-process cocoa

As crust cooks, grind walnuts to a fine powder and set aside. Mine ground to more of a paste, but close enough.

Beat eggs at high speed for 2–3 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Add salt and vanilla and then, on low speed, add sugar and cocoa. Increase the speed to high again and beat for 2–3 minutes more. On low speed beat in ground walnuts, beating only until incorporated.

Soften jam in the microwave if it’s jellylike, then spread over the hot crust, leaving a centimetre border at the edges.

Pour filling over the crust and jam, tilting pan to level.

Bake at 190C for half an hour. Cool completely before icing.

170g dark chocolate chips

2 tablespoons corn, rice malt or golden syrup

2 teaspoons espresso coffee

2 teaspoons boiling water

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

In a bowl, microwave chocolate in 20-second bursts stirring in between until melted. Add corn syrup, coffee and boiling water, and stir until smooth.

Spread icing over cake; sprinkle with chopped walnuts and press down gently. Cool and refrigerate for an hour or two or overnight before slicing into squares and serving at room temperature.

Adapted from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies, pp84–5.

 

Georgia Pecan Bars

Another contender for the Ugly But Tasty Awards, adapted from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Cookies, pp108–9

Preheat oven to 180C and centre a rack in the oven. Line a 13x9” oblong slice pan, though I found this made a rather thin slice by Australian standards and I’d try a 7x9” if I did this again.

Crust

200g plain flour, sifted

½ teaspoon baking powder

100g dark muscovado sugar

120g unsalted butter, chopped up

¼ teaspoon salt [my addition]

Maida says to add the butter to the dry ingredients and cut in the butter with a pastry blender. I don’t have one of these utterly unfamiliar-looking objects, and neither does any eBay seller in Australia, so that’s too bad – into the Kitchenaid with it until it formed a rough crumbly mixture I could flatten firmly into the base of the pan and set aside.

Topping

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

50g dark muscovado sugar

¾ cup dark corn syrup (I used roughly equal parts golden syrup and raw agave nectar to approximate this)

3 tablespoons sifted plain flour

200g pecans (I used half walnuts once I found out I had too few pecans – yes, I should have checked first, and no, I didn’t – checking the Back Fridge is a very cold exercise at the moment and one readily neglected)

I also added a good handful of choc chips at the end because I felt like it and it seemed right. And I stand by that.

Beat the eggs to mix. Add vanilla, sugar, syrup and flour and beat until smooth.

Pour the topping over the waiting and uncooked crust, tilting to form an even layer. Scatter over the pecan pieces, with walnuts and choc chips in my case.

Bake for 40 minutes (an hour for me) or until the top is golden brown – which it already is, but I won’t quibble.

After about 20 minutes, carefully lift the slice out of the tin in its baking paper, and leave on a rack to cool completely before moving it to the fridge to chill for an hour before attempting to slice it up with a serrated bread knife.

Florida Lemon Squares

I don’t know about this Florida place after which Maida names so many of her recipes. I’ve seen Dexter, and there were no lemon squares or brownies or biscuits in evidence there, unless his emotionally manipulative wife made them before that scene with the bath, you know that scene. She was more of a pancake-in-a-bottle type though, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But these ugly wonders from Maida’s Book of Great Cookies are pretty good, wholesome and lemony and full of texture – all about character rather than looks. And most forgiving of my numerous workarounds.

220g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 can condensed milk
Finely grated zest 1 large lemon
1/2 cup lemon juice
150g butter
200g dark brown sugar, firmly packed (I used half light-brown and half dark muscovado)
100g oatmeal (I used rolled oats)

Preheat oven to 180C.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. Pour the condensed milk into a bowl, zest over the lemon and gradually add the lemon juice, whisking to keep the mixture smooth. Set aside.

Cream the butter, add sugar and beat well. On low speed gradually add the dry ingredients, beating only until combined. Mix in the oats. The mixture will be as dry and loose as that for apple crumble, which it basically is.

Sprinkle about 2 cups of the oatmeal mixture evenly over the bottom of a 9" x 13" pan lined with baking paper (I used a 7" x 9"). Pat the crumbs firmly (or get the coffee tamper onto it) to make a smooth, compact layer.

Pour the lemon mixture evenly over the crumb layer and spread with a spatula to evenness. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture over the lemon layer. It’s okay if a bit of the lemon layer shows through in spots (though it won’t if you’ve used a much smaller pan than recommended).

Bake for 35 minutes until lightly coloured (mine took 55 to achieve any colour). Cool completely in pan, then refrigerate for at least an hour (or overnight) before removing from pan and baking paper to cut into small squares. Some icing sugar sifted over can help with their appearance. Serve fridge-cold. Or, I infer, they’d be as tooth-curlingly sweet as Rita Morgan and oozing condensed milk besides.

Chocolate-mint slice

Maida knows her brownies. She is famous for carrying around cellophane-wrapped brownies in her handbag and giving them out to all and sundry.

That’s very very cool, in my view. I could do that, maybe on the 86 tram or at the pub, but I would need to learn to remember they were there. My bag’s a black hole of forgotten stuff. Such as the salted duck egg I bought on Saturday at Minh Phat and placed carefully in my shoulder bag so it wouldn’t break, instead of chucking it in the green bag to be jostled by everything else. Well, out of sight, out of mind, that’s all I can say about that little episode. (Okay then, so maybe it surfaced when I was looking for a pen during tonight’s French class, which consists of six trés elegant women who are pretty much French, and a trés elegant teacher who is totally French, and me sitting there with my egg like a character from some lesser slapstick. Mais alors, this is not a post about preserved eggs – that unalloyed pleasure must wait for another day – so back on topic.)

This is called Chocolate Mint Sticks, really, but it’s in the brownie section of Maida’s Book of Great Cookies, and is more like a slice for us. I’m resisting the endangerment of ‘sloice’ falling victim by creeping USing to brownie or bar cookie or what-have-you. 

60g darkest chocolate (I used 70.4% Callebaut Strong)

115g butter

2 eggs

pinch salt

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup sugar, white or raw
1/2 cup plain flour, sifted

½ roughly chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Line a 9" square cake tin or equivalent rectangle with baking paper, unless it’s silicon.

Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler if you have one, or I did it in 20-second bursts in the microwave with brief stirs in between until smooth. Leave to cool slightly.

Beat eggs until foamy, then add salt, vanilla and sugar. Add the cooling chocolate mixture – still-warmish is okay – and beat to mix. On low speed, add flour bit by bit until it’s all just incorporated, no need to overmix. Stir in the walnuts.

Pour into the cake tin and smooth evenly. Bake for 28 minutes, or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. Leave in pan at room temperature until cool.*

Time to get on with the mint layer.

30g butter, room temperature

1 cup sifted icing sugar

1 tablespoon cream

½ teaspoon peppermint extract – or I used 12 drops essential oil of peppermint**

Beat all ingredients until smooth. You might need a tiny bit more cream, but it should be a fairly thick mixture, not runny.

Spread in a thin layer over the cooled cake, still in the pan. Place in the fridge for no longer than 5 minutes – Maida says. No idea why, but I’m not arguing. Meanwhile, on with the glaze.

30g bittersweet dark chocolate

15g butter

Melt together by microwave, stove with double boiler, as you like it, until smooth.

Pour the hot glaze over the chilled mint layer and quickly tilt it to cover completely – it’ll be a very thin layer. Refrigerate or freeze – Maida suggests serving directly from the freezer, in fact.

I was not expecting it to taste exactly like an Arnott’s Mint Slice. This is not a bad thing, though it’s many years since I would arrive home from school and polish off half an unattended packet.

(Oh, I need to lie down. In gathering for you the above pic from Google Images, the things I did see. There are people are out there recreating their favourite trashy biscuit, under the mission of the Arnott’s Challenge, or just pimping them for fun! O brave new world, that has such people in’t! What would you, dear reader, like recreated?)

*Yes, do wait for it to cool completely, take it from your chastened Macarong. If impatient to get it done because work or gym or bed calls, resist rushing it. If the cake is still warmish, the mint layer neither spreads easily – it sort of melts slightly on contact – nor chills enough in the five minutes to stay put when tilting the warm melted chocolate over the top. See? Exactly the special marbled effect I was aiming for…

**This almost caused my little brain to melt. So: use only one part essential oil to four parts extract. Hence 1/8 teaspoon essential oil=oh, impossible to measure that. Okay, let’s try another tack: 20 drops essential oil =1 mL. 5 mL= 1 teaspoon, so 1/8 teaspoon=0.6 mL or 12 drops. There. It was plenty of peppermint.

Whole lemon bars

*

 I haven’t come across a lot of this style of lemon slice – or lemon bar, as David Lebovitz and the rest of the US would have it. It’s not the usual tuckshop bakeless condensed milk/crushed-biscuit lemon sloice with a layer of lemon icing and desiccated coconut, but is more like a lemon curd layer oven-baked over a prebaked shortbread crust.

This uses the whole lemon, so organic ones are called for; Meyers tend to be mentioned a lot when it comes to baking sweet lemony things, but I’ve never come across them that I know of. I turned to the huge husky lemons I was given from someone’s tree, rather than schlepping to an organic shop with baskets and hand-chalked blackboards (organic produce: a good thing; the cultish well-heeled smugness often – that’s often, as in not always – surrounding its supply and consumption: sometimes sick-making). These citrus footballs had a thick layer of pith, so I peeled off the good skin with a veggie peeler and then cut away the potentially sour pith and ditched that.

I also threw in a lime cut in quarters in lieu of the juice of another lemon, although would the food processor chop up the skin? Would it bugger, to paraphrase Bubble of Ab Fab. It had to be fished out and chopped manually in a pool of lemony, sugary egg as I puzzled over how the blade would know the difference between that and lemon rind.

And it would have been better to remain out – anyone who copped a mouthful of lime rind as an introduction to the slice got the old involuntary mouth-pucker, however tart they claimed to like their lemon slice. Despite this, all were polished off by the end of the working day – only the Tall Designer was a total wuss and couldn’t finish his piece. I think the delicately crunchy buttery shortcrust base went a long way to soothe most.

*Admire with me the shot kindly taken by the Quiltmaker with her nifty Hipstamatic app just before the last piece vanished. I love its ghostly grid and its nostalgic orange cast, although by the harsh light of day the slice was rather more pallid.