Butter Pecan Turtle Bars
I can’t tell you how good these are! It’s good I don’t have a pan of these sitting around, what with trying to be on a diet and all. I’d be helpless.
This recipe came from the Tasty Favorites cookbook and the 2-page spread that they’re on is a dynamite 2 pages. Seriously, I was trying to choose between all 4 recipes. First, I weeded out the Chewy Peanut Butter Bars, I think because I wasn’t too sure about the coconut… they, by the way, are not similar to the Peanut Butter Dream Bars featured awhile ago. Next, I weeded out the Chocolate Crunch Bars, mostly because I had made something similar to those before, except the brownie part was a brownie mix in my other recipe instead of made from scratch like this one. I just could not choose between the Caramel Toffee Bars and the Butter Pecan Turtle Bars (which are actually called Butter Pecan Turtle Cookies in this cookbook, but I’d say they’re bars because they’re made in a pan then cut apart, not made individually like cookies). And finally the Turtle ones won. BUT, you will probably be seeing those other recipes sometime in the future.
Back to that Tasty Favorites cookbook, I love it! It’s got 227 pages of good solid down home cookin’ recipes in it. It’s compiled by the Pleasant Grove Mennonite Church in IN. If any of you readers are from there, you did a GREAT job compiling that cookbook! I know my cousin Nic goes to that church, but I don’t think I know anyone else there.
Anyway, back to the Turtle bars…
Butter Pecan Turtle Bars
2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup pecan pieces
Mix flour, sugar, and butter, and pat into a 9×13 pan.
I wasn’t too sure about this crust when I was making it. It seemed too thick for as fine and crumbly as it was. But after it baked, it was perfectly firm and not crumbly at all.
Sprinkle pecan pieces over crust.
Caramel Layer:
2/3 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup milk chocolate chips
In a 1-qt pan, combine butter and sugar, cook. When entire surface boils; boil 1/2 to 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour over pecan crust.
Anybody getting a caramel craving? I’m feeling a strong urge to make these bars again.
Bake at 350 on center rack for 18-22 minutes or until caramel is bubbly all over and crust is lightly browned.
Sprinkle chocolate chips on and allow to melt slightly, swirl as they melt.
I will not go out to my kitchen and make these right now. I will not go out to my kitchen and make these right now. I will not… somebody, please help me… I could use a bit of willpower here.
Smiling Sugar Cookies - Cooks in Training #2
I’m going to try to do this series without talking every time about big messes and me using a rag every 2 minutes before the mess takes over my kitchen. Hmmmm… now, I’m sitting here with nothing to say if I can’t talk about that…
Just kidding. We had fun. And now Lexi can finally stop sharply inhaling and saying, “Mom, let’s make these sometime!” whenever she sees these cookies in the 2004 Quick Cooking cookbook.
Smiling Sugar Cookies
1/2 cup butter (no substitutes), softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
About 24 popsicle sticks
1 cup vanilla frosting
Food coloring
Assorted small candies (we used M&Ms)
Cream the butter and sugars. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla. Combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Roll the dough into 1 1/2″ balls.
Insert stick into the center of each. Place 2″ apart on lightly greased baking sheets; flatten slightly.
Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned.
That baking time is a problem for 2 little energetic cooks. Tiffany and I made frosting and Tiffany licked the beater while Lexi wrote stuff with popsicle sticks to pass the time. And they still kept peeking in the oven and asking if the cookies were almost done.
Remove to wire racks to cool. Divide frosting between bowls and tint them to desired colors. Put each frosting in a plastic bag and snip off a small corner of the bag. Pipe hair and mouths onto cookies. Use a small dab of frosting to attach small candies for noses and eyes.
Ah, I just love that chubby little hand with a decorating bag. She actually didn’t do too bad at decorating for a 2-yr-old.
Let dry for at least 30 minutes. Yield: about 2 dozen.
And here’s the finished product…
They would’ve been kinda cute poked into something and standing up, but I couldn’t think of anything around here that would work for that. 3 were eaten plain, we got 19 cookies out of the batch.
Here’s the smiley section. Alot of the food I take pictures of (if it’s for a meal) gets photographed while everyone is coming to the table or sitting down already and when I take more than 1 picture, there are jokes like, “Wasn’t it smiling the first time?” With these, the joke was, “Oh, now the food actually does have to smile!”
Yes, those are all smileys… use your imagination. Tiffany did that one by herself with the red mohawk. And the one with the yellow hair and green eyes has a beard… Lexi’s creation (before we even started decorating, she said she’s gonna make one with a beard, don’t know why she thought of that, she’s rarely around anyone with a beard). I made only one of these and I certainly hope you can tell which one. 
Soon, Lexi got bored with smiley faces, so she switched to flowers and a butterfly…
Now, about making these with your kids… I just went back to check the time on my camera. The very first picture (dumping ingredients into the bowl) was taken at 2:54 p.m. The last picture taken (them sitting there holding cookies) was taken at 4:30 p.m. 1 1/2 hours… not alot of time. Skip storytime and spend 1 hour less on the computer someday (ouch, less computer time? that hurt. Let’s switch that one to ’skip scrubbing the kitchen floor and weed the flowerbed some other day’). They will have a ball of fun and it’ll make memories for them. And hopefully not too bad of nightmares for you.
Oh, and by the way, this is actually a good sugar cookie recipe if you just want to make regular sugar cookies sometime. I don’t like sugar cookies because they’re always so dry and tasteless (that’s my opinion, I live with a couple of people who really like them), but these are better than most of the sugar cookies I’ve had.
Sweet Lemon Bars
I love looking thro’ recipes, cookbooks, etc. It can keep my attention as good as any interesting book. And one nice thing about it is that it is calorie-free… the looking and reading, that is! Where I get into trouble is when something reaches out and grabs me and I can’t help but go out to the kitchen and make it. That’s why I purposely don’t keep chocolate chips on hand. Chocolate is my weakness. And I do believe that I’ve become immune to getting sick from it.
Anyway, it was raining yesterday evening and the church ballgame got cancelled, and I was in the mood to bake something. So, I started going thro’ recipes. I had no chocolate in the house, so any recipe with that was out. I also had no brown sugar, so that threw out alot of cookie recipes. Then this lemon bar recipe caught my eye, and I had everything on hand, including fresh lemons. I didn’t know if any of us even liked lemon bars, but they sure looked tempting on the picture, so lemon bars it was.
Sweet Lemon Bars …recipe taken from an Easy to Bake Easy to Make recipe card
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. grated lemon rind
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 3 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
Preheat oven to 350. Line bottom of 8″ square baking dish with parchment paper. I didn’t do that, I just greased the pan well. Mix flour, butter, and powdered sugar together using hand mixer until fine crumbs form. Using drinking glass, press crumbs evenly into bottom of lined baking dish.
This was sort of a joke. I started like that, but then ended up using my hand. Worked great!
Bake until crust is lightly browned, about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, beat eggs, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy. Add lemon rind and lemon juice. Blend in cream cheese. Pour over baked crust.
Return to oven and bake until firm in the center when touched, about 25 minutes longer.
Cool to room temperature; sift powdered sugar over top.
Cut into 9 squares and cut each of the squares in half diagonally to make triangles. Serve or store in refrigerator. Makes 18 triangles.
For the grated lemon rind and the lemon curl garnishes, I used the tool pictured below. Not sure what it’s called, maybe a lemon zester/scorer. It’s a Pampered Chef item and it works like a charm! I cut off a string of peeling with the part in the middle of the tool, then curled the peel around a pen so it would be more apt to curl on the plate later. I tried to find a utensil with a round handle and had none, so I used a pen. Yeah, even my wooden spoon handles aren’t round! The grating was actually lemon zest, done with the top part. I do it in as tiny pieces as possible so it dissolves or whatever it does that you don’t see it or feel the texture of it in the finished product.
I liked these bars the best chilled. When I told Shannon that, he said he’s tried them at every temperature from slightly warm to chilled and they passed with flying colors at all stages. They were just tops and I do know now that baked stuff doesn’t have to be chocolate to taste great and leave you coming back for more. So, we were pretty hard on them and I don’t think I’ll tell you how much of the pan is left! And we’re not sharing, so you’ll just have to make them yourself.
Whoopie Pies
My Father’s Day post I had planned didn’t really happen then, but Happy Belated Father’s Day anyway. Especially to the father of my daughters. And also to my own father.
I’ve got good memories growing up. Dad spent alot of time with us, from laying on the floor playing games with us to taking the family out on the boat multiple times a week in the evening in the summer. Dad taught us children how to play chess when we were pretty young. He’d take off his queen AND give us hints. As we got older, the hints stopped and eventually the queen came back on, and we could even beat him sometimes. We went boating and picnicking on islands and fishing alot too. I grew up here among the many lakes in the northwoods and a boat was almost as important to own as a car, in our opinions. At a certain age, Dad stopped taking the fish off of our hooks and said we were old enough to do it ourselves. I don’t remember exactly what age that was (maybe 9 or 10 yrs old), but whenever it was is when I started mostly just going along fishing for the ride and not getting my pole out. I missed seeing my bobber jerk underwater and feel the tug on the line, but it was worth giving up not to have to take a fish off the hook! His storytelling ability is amazing and kept us very entertained and wide-eyed growing up… especially the stories involving his horse Dusty and the stories about their one-of-a-kind neighbor. Oh, and one other thing, not alot of people grew up with yearly Donald Duck renditions by their dad of the “Happy Birthday to you” song.
Another thing about Dad is that he loves whoopie pies. Every year for his birthday, Mom would make him whoopie pies and at least one year, she made a whoopie pie cake. It was huge (maybe about 12″ across) and looked exactly like a whoopie pie. I haven’t made whoopie pies for years, but I did just lately. I was so disappointed that they didn’t turn out like Sheila’s OR Julia’s… the 2 people that I consider to be whoopie pie queens. But oh well, they were good anyway.
Not sure why this picture has a lavendar hue! ????
Ever wonder why whoopie pies are called whoopie pies? I didn’t really wonder it until Lexi wondered it and started questioning me like I’d just automatically know. It’s like 3 desserts all in one… they taste like chocolate cake with frosting, but you bake them like cookies, and they’re called pies! Maybe it’s one of those things that will forever be a mystery… try explaining that to a 5-yr-old! Her world is full of questions and she’s not satisfied with no answer.
Whoopie pies …recipe taken from the Tasty Favorites cookbook (Pleasant Grove Mennonite Church)
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
3/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp. soda
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup hot water
1 cup sour milk or buttermilk
4 cups sifted flour (sift?! Does anyone out there sift?)
Mix and drop by teaspoonfuls (I did more like 2 Tablespoonfuls) on cookie sheet. I spread them out a little so they wouldn’t be so thick. I don’t like thick whoopie pies… too much cake.
Bake at 400 for 8 minutes. I baked it for 7 minutes.
Filling:
2 egg whites
2 Tbsp. vanilla
4 tsp. flour
4 tsp. milk
2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup Crisco
Beat egg whites until stiff. Add vanilla, flour milk, and powdered sugar. Beat and cream, then add Crisco. Spread filling on bottom side of one cookie.
Top with another cookie. Yield: 66 cookies (33 sandwiches) Here you go, Dad… I wish you could just pick one off the screen!
This recipe tasted great, but I had a couple problems with it. The filling didn’t get white. It was a light tan. Do you think the vanilla is a misprint? Should it be teaspoons? Everything else in the filling is white except the Crisco I used is yellow, so I think it was mainly the vanilla’s fault that it got tan. The other problem I had was that the cookie part made 5 1/2 dozen cookies, which made 33 sandwiches, but the filling was gone after 24 sandwiches. And it was none too thick, either. So, next time, I’d either make 1.5 times the amount of filling or do what I did this time… filled the leftover cookies with ice cream.
That was good! They tasted like ice cream sandwiches!
On a different note: I won’t be posting on here much at all this week… we have Summer Bible School at church Monday - Friday and I’m teaching the nursery class (4-yr-olds), so that’s where I’ll be during the day. Then, the rest of the time I’ll be trying to keep up with the laundry, cleaning, etc. around here. Some wonderful ladies from church who aren’t teaching offered to make suppers, so I’ll probably be doing little cooking this week. I will be making rice crispy treats for snack time at Bible School though.
Peanut Butter Dream Bars
There are just some recipes you fall in love with when you read over them and you know you’ve just gotta try it. The recipe today was one of them. Most of the recipes like that for me are cookies, bars, or a dessert of some sort.
Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t just do a dessert site instead of a general cooking site. But, on second thought, that might not be a good idea because think of all the desserts and cookies and stuff I’d have to make to keep it updated! That wouldn’t be good for the wasteline.
In case you wonder, you pretty much get stuff hot off the press here. So, you know what we’ve been eating within the last day or two. I’m not a plan ahead person in any other area of my life (it’s something I’m trying to work on though!), so I’m not with this site, either. I have no posts made ahead. For example, I’m planning to make my ‘Out of my Comfort Zone’ lettuce salad with fruit in it today and post it tomorrow. And no-posts-made-ahead is why my site died the week I went with Shannon on a business run to PA and also over Memorial Day weekend.
Anyway, I don’t know why I said all that just before saying this: these bars are an exception, I actually made them last week! I think it was maybe Thursday. So they are long gone by now. I only made half a batch because I didn’t want a huge pan of them around here. Way too tempting! I got the recipe from Michelle. She said, “I think the title doesn’t do them justice. I think a better name would be Peanut Butter Dream Bars. See what you think.” And I agree! Oatmeal Bars sound like a healthy something with raisins in. These would NOT fit that mental picture!!! See what you think.
Oatmeal Bars
2 cups melted butter (starting out with melted butter… you KNOW they’re gonna be good!)
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. soda
4 cups oatmeal
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
2/3 cup peanut butter
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
2 cups mini choc. chips or mini m&m’s
Mix together melted butter, sugar, soda, oatmeal, flour & salt until it’s crumbly.
Set aside 3 cups. Press the rest into a greased 15×10 pan. Remember I made a half batch. I couldn’t decide what size pan would be half of a 10×15. That’s 150 square inches, so half would be something that’s 75 square inches. An 8×8 is 64, a 9×13 is 117. So I picked the 8×8. Maybe I need more baking pans. Or maybe they don’t even make 8×9 pans (72 sq in) or better yet, 7 x 10.5, that would be perfect. Um, let’s see, I forget, were we baking or having Math class?
Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.
Mix peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk. Spread over the baked crust. Pour/drizzle worked great. Yum, doesn’t that mixture look good?! It is. I licked the spatula afterwards.
Mix mini choc chips or m&m’s with the reserved crumbs. Sprinkle the reserved crumbs on top of the peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk mixture. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
Enlarged to show texture. And that creamy caramelly peanut buttery layer. These definitely do not fit the ‘Oatmeal Bar’ name. In a recipe that has peanut butter and M&Ms and oatmeal, WHO would pick out the oatmeal and name them THAT?! So, Peanut Butter Dream Bars they will be. They are, of course, irrestistably good. They’re a bit crumbly, for example, you wouldn’t want the kids to walk around in the house eating them. But then, who’d ever let their kids do that anyway. Thanks for the recipe, Michelle! It’s a keeper.
Edit: I made them again and put a half recipe in a 9×13 and that was perfect, they were not as crumbly as they were with the 8×8 pan.
About Me
Hi! Welcome to my kitchen! My name is Kay. I'm from northern WI. I love cooking and baking. Especially baking. It's thereapeudic for me. I'm not a professional or gourmet cook by any means. I'm a Mennonite homemaker who happens to take pictures of some of the food I make. I have 2 little 'helpers'... Lexi (5) and Tiffany (2), who are young cooks in training. I don't do anything on the grill... that's where my husband comes in! He grills quite a bit, especially in the summer. So, sit back and enjoy browsing thro' the recipes. If you try some of them, I'd love to hear feedback on how you liked them!
Blogroll
- Cookie Madness - Great recipes and pictures of cookies that leave you with a helpless craving.
- Mama’s Southern Cooking - Comfy site with good cookin’ and lots of tips.
- The Pioneer Woman Cooks! - Home-cooking, lots of pictures and fun reading
Her Blog Directory