Dolly's magic bars

These bars are often called Hello Dolly bars, or seven layer bars or magic bars. I never really got the seven layers name - it makes them sound like they are way more complicated than they are. And they are really, really not complicated to make. They take about 10 minutes to get them in the oven and they really have two very simple layers: a graham crumb crust and then a gooey, caramelly chocolate and nuts layer, balanced with some flaky salt on top. 

You can put anything you want in these bars. I like to go with lots of types of chocolate, and I think the star touch is the malted chocolate balls. When you bake them, the malty insides kind of vaporize into crispy, melty magic. I’m very fond of this particular combination, but go for whatever you like - often these bars have coconut, or dried fruit. 

dolly’s magic bars

• 1 ½ cups graham crumbs 

• ½ cup butter, melted 

• 1 tin sweetened condensed milk 

• ¼ cup milk chocolate chips or chunks

• ¼ cup dark chocolate chips or chunks

• ¼ cup white chocolate chips or chunks

• ¼ cup chocolate malt balls (Maltesers or Whoppers)

• ½ cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped

• 1.2 cup toasted pecans, roughly chopped

• A very generous pinch of flaky salt (Maldon salt is great)

Line an 8” x 8” pan with parchment paper. Combine graham crumbs and butter until evenly mixed. Spread over the bottom of lined pan, and smooth into a uniform layer. 

Sprinkle chocolate and nuts over the graham crumbs. Pour the condensed milk evenly over the chocolate and nuts, scraping out as much from the can as possible. Sprinkle a bunch of flaky salt over top (I like to really go for it with the salt - these are very sweet and they can handle it!).
Bake at 350° F for around 30 minutes, or until the top is caramelized and bubbly. Cool bars completely before cutting (chilling them helps even more). These keep well in an airtight container in the fridge (or freezer) if you manage to keep them hanging around.

pb & j blondies

Peanut butter and jam is a classic and perfect combination, but it suffers from a somewhat childish reputation. But there is a reason children love it - it’s great. The addition of a little flaky salt on the top is enough to make these blondies grown up, but not put off the kids who have tirelessly campaigned for the PB & J movement these many years.  

I like to use crunchy peanut butter because it gives a little textural variation. You could go with smooth and add some chopped peanuts if you like, but I don’t recommend using sweetened PB, these are plenty sweet with natural style peanut butter. Don’t be shy with the jam - I increased the jam considerably from the original version, and it was delightful. Do not over bake: these should come out fudgy and gooey, the centre will look just set when you pull them out of the oven.

PB & J blondies:

Adapted from Bon Appetit  

• ½ cup butter, melted

• 1¼ cups all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 2 large eggs

• 1½ cups light brown sugar

• ¾ cup peanut butter (I used and recommend unsweetened, chunky peanut butter)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 6 tablespoons strawberry jam

• big pinch flaky sea salt (such as Maldon)

Heat oven to 350°.

In a large bowl combine eggs, sugar, peanut butter, butter and vanilla and mix until smooth. Fold in flour, baking powder and 1 tsp salt until evenly incorporated.

Spread batter in a parchment lined 8”x8” pan and press a spoon-back into the batter to create little dents for jam. Dollop jam generously into jam-dents and sprinkle a pinch on flaky salt over the top. Bake 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle (avoiding jammy spots) comes out clean. Let cool and cut into squares.

Let's eat bugs! Cricket & berry breakfast bars

About two years ago, I tried to farm my own crickets in my small apartment. That might not make a ton of sense to you, but it seemed like a great idea at the time.

I had been reading a lot about these trendy new insect-food startups, I tried some tasty cricket-protein bars and then I wanted to take my protein production into my own hands. Crickets are high protein, good at converting food into body mass, nutritious and (according to the internet) easyish to grow at home. People who keep reptiles that eat bugs seem to be able to grow them just fine. 

I  could not. I tried everything to make those damn crickets happy, but they were not happy.

What they were, was disturbingly cannibalistic. They ate each other a lot. This apparently means they are stressed out, despite our best efforts to keep them calm. They like to hide so I put lots of nice egg cartons in their tank to hang out in, gave them lots of food and water and a little heat pad in case they were chilly, but also an unheated area in case they were too warm. I tried to build them a cricket paradise.

But the cricket cannibalism persisted. They would eat and drink and reproduce - lots of little baby crickets hopping around. But their numbers never really grew and eventually it was clear that they were chomping each other more than the food I was feeding them. I was spiralling down an internet rabbit hole of cricket breeding people, trying all their tips and tricks and nothing seemed to help.

I eventually gave up. I was sad that my project failed and I missed their gentle chirps, like a live white noise machine in my living room. It was soothing. But I still wanted to try cooking with crickets so I kept my eye out for a source of readily available cricket powder. I looked around online and a few times I even had some in my amazon cart, but shipping was prohibitively expensive.

Recently I saw that Superstore has cricket powder. I’m not normally into buzz marketing supermarkets, but this the only place I have found cricket flour anywhere near where I live. It's still pretty expensive, about $15 for 113 grams, which is a pretty small bag. I hope that they will gain popularity and the price will go down.

Crickets are a great to replace other animal proteins, they are relatively climate-friendly compared with cows, pigs or chickens. If you are interested in reducing your meat consumption for environmental reasons, switching some your protein to bugs is a great step.

If the idea of eating bugs seems gross, too leggy and antenna-y, starting with ground crickets is a lot easier. Look how un-intimidating cricket flour is:

Ground into a flour, crickets are pretty bland and mildly nutty, they can go with pretty much anything, sweet or savoury. I wanted to create a few recipes with cricket flour to give an idea of how versatile it is. It’s a great protein and vitamin boost to all sorts of recipes, and you can use it pretty much as you would protein powder. Stay tuned for more soon in this Let’s eat bugs! series; I’m going to make cricket enriched polenta fries,  energy bites and cookies. 

cricket & berry breakfast bars:

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

crust:

• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

• 6 tbs cricket flour

• 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

• 1 1/4 cups rolled oats

• 3 tbs hemp seed hearts

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

• 3/4 cup butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

Heat oven to 350°F. Line an 8x8 pan with parchment paper.

Combine all ingredients except butter in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse a couple times to combine. Add butter and pulse until the butter is incorporated and the crumbs form into a sandy rubble. Press about half of the mixture into the bottom of prepared pan. Bake for about 10 minutes and allow to cool.

raspberry & strawberry filling:

• 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• 1 pound mixed raspberries and strawberries, fresh or frozen

• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss to coat the berries. Spread filling over pre-baked crust. Sprinkle remaining crumb over the filling and bake about 40 minutes, until the filling is bubbling and the top is golden.

Cool completely and slice into squares. Chirp!

Note: this is not a sponsored post, I bought my own cricket powder at full price. If anyone wants to send me some cricket products to try, I'll take em! I may or may not actually talk about them though. 

caramel swirl brownies

These are really fudgey, gooey brownies. If you are a cakey brownie person (why though? Cakey brownies are obviously inferior.) these are not for you. These brownies really foxed me at first; the original recipe called for a 9" x 13" pan and I just couldn't get them to bake properly at that size. When the condensed milk was perfectly bubbly and golden brown on top, the brownies in the middle of the pan were still oozingly raw.

I solved the problem by halving the recipe and using an 8" x 8", without skimping at all on the condensed milk. This did the trick and I got soft, gooey, just-set brownies with a frankly shocking amount of  swirly puddles of condensed milk through the bars and a crispy-crackly caramelized top. 

They are crazy rich. I urge you to keep the flaky salt on top, even to go a little more heavy-handed with the salt than you might be thinking. The salt is going to balance the sweetness beautifully, and really make that condensed milk caramel sing. They are best served cut into tiny bite-sized pieces, and any leftovers freeze really well. If you should have any leftovers...

caramel swirl brownies: 

adapted from Fine Cooking

• 3/4 cup butter

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup + 2 tbs cups cocoa powder

• 3 oz. semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped

• 1 cup + 2 tbs granulated sugar

• 2 tbs brown sugar

• 1 tsp salt

• 3 large eggs, cold

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

• 1 tsp espresso powder (optional)

• 1 tin condensed milk

• big pinch flaky sea salt

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. When the butter is melted, remove from heat and stir in chocolate. Let the heat from the butter melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally until fully melted and  incorporated. 

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whip eggs, sugars, vanilla and espresso powder on a medium-high speed. Whip until very fluffy and pale yellow, around 8 minutes. While the eggs whip, whisk together flour and coco in a medium bowl, making sure there are no clumps. 

Once egg mixture is very fluffy, reduce speed to low and pour in the chocolate-butter mixture 

Pour about 2/3 of the condensed milk over the top of the batter, and swirl around with a toothpick. Bake for about 10-15 minutes, until the top is starting to caramelize and bubble. Pour over the remaining milk and sprinkle with a big pinch of flaky salt. Saving some milk to add later helps make sure that you get a chewy caramelly top and it doesn't all sink into the batter.

Continue to bake for about 10-15 minutes, until all the caramel is bubbly and caramel brown. 

Let cool completely and  cut into small squares.