Cranberry Oat Bars

My friend Elisabeth made these for us one evening, along with her cheesy manicotti. The manicotti merits a post of its own, so maybe that will be the next recipe. Elisabeth told me that her family's tradition was to have cranberry oat bars and hot chocolate as they decorated their Christmas tree. A lovely tradition, and we've started it ourselves! But it's too good for just once a year, so I made it just recently.
Step One:
Find a cute helper with a can-do attitude:


Step Two:
You have a choice here. The official recipe call for 2 cups of cranberries cooked with 3/4 water and 1/4 cup sugar until the berries pop.
Or, if you like it very tart, you can do it my way: 3 cups of cranberries and a generous cup of sugar with about 1/3 cup water.
Either way, let the cooked berries cool.

Step Three:
Mix 1 1/4 flour, 1 1/4 cup oats, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt in a medium bowl.

Step Four:
In a large bowl, mix 3/4 cup softened butter, 1 cup sugar (1/4 cup at a time) 2 large eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add the oat mixture and mix well.

Step Five:
Reserve 1 cup of dough; spread the rest in a greased 9" or 8" pan. Cover with cranberries. Drop reserved dough in spoonfuls. If you've used a square pan, drop the dough in a checkerboard pattern. It will turn out very pretty. If you're using your blue deep-dish Emile Henry pie dish because it's beautiful and you love it, you'll find out that checkerboards don't work in the round. In that case, drop the dough as best you can:


Step Six:
Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.


That's it. They're delicious, and they go very well with mugs of hot chocolate. After you're done making them, if you have an easily-pleased child, stuff the empty flour bag with notebook paper and tape it shut. Tell her it's a toy bag of flour for her play kitchen:

Baking Fail, Preschool Win

In Suzy's preschool lesson today, we were going to make Christmas cookies. Nothing elaborate, I thought. Just plain cookies, in circles and hearts, with green icing and multi-colored sprinkles. Just an easy, relaxing Christmas activity or mother and daughter. Except I totally failed, and for the first time in my life, my trusty Fanny Farmer cookbook let me down! There was nowhere near enough flour in the dough to roll it out, so I kept adding it in nervous scoops until it got thick enough. When it was time to roll it out, I had a plan. That also failed. I've read that if you roll out the dough on the cookie sheet, you can cut the cookies out directly in place and simply peel up the scrap dough. So mess-free and simple. Except, of course, that it didn't happen. Suzy and I took turns with the rolling pin to smooth the dough out into the pan. Then She got to work with her cookie cutters. I went to peel up the dough, and it just smushed and smeared. I tried lifting the cookies out with a spatula, and they too were destroyed.
By this time I was seriously frustrated. But I tried to put a positive spin on it for Suzy. "Hey, Suzy, would it be fun to squish up all this dough and pat it out onto the pizza stone?" "YEAH!" "And make one GIANT cookie that you can cover with red sugar?" "YES!" So we did that, and she had a blast. And it was not bad tasting, for all it lacked in looks.