BCM – butter cake and granola (bars)

I have been hopelessly behind on all of my cooking/blogging activities. But the latest previous recipes from Baking Chez Moi have looked so delicious!

First, I realized a bit late, that one of the recipes for this group was Granola Bars. I’ve been traveling a lot, and I thought “hey, I should make those and take them on my trips!”. Of course, as I thought this, I was in Sedona with 4 cookbooks, none of them BCM. But then, I realized that my friend Christie who has the amazing blog GoldenLifePHX, would maybe, just maybe, give me the recipe. I was in luck! And while I was at it, I looked at her post for granola bars, and got the gist of them. I even stole a couple of tips. Organic oats, a couple of kinds of raisins and some cranberries, slivered almonds, sweetened with maple syrup! I was ready.

It all seemed to be going so well! But, not quite well enough. The bars came out of the oven. Were compressed as required, but I’m afraid they were destined more for granola than for granola bars. I could barely get one or two bars cut. Something went awry.

All of that said, this was delicious granola!! Very tasty. I did also add a little cinnamon as I usually do with my typical granola. The fruit was a beautiful addition, and didn’t get over-done as I was worried it might. I will probably stick with my usual recipe, but it was fun to try.

Next up| Brown Butter and Vanilla Bean Weekend Cake.

I thought that this would be another wonderful treat. Weekends have been known to include ice cream – what would be better than this cake? And one that holds its own over a few days? Others have done a terrific job of demonstrating how this is made, and to be honest, I just kind of made it without taking pictures. I did go the route of using vanilla extract. I’m a huge (!) fan of Penzey’s Double-stregth. I decided that it was wonderful enough to just use that rather than the bean. The browned butter was fun to make and left satisfying specks in the batter. It baked up beautifully.

Isn’t that gorgeous? But again, I wasn’t really thinking about this. Two fails: the dark pan – I always forget to reduce the heat a few degrees. Oh, and prepping the pan… well, I forgot the parchment.

What a sad thing. But, it all turned around as we enjoyed this cake. It did live up to the promise of being even better the second day. I think this recipe would be fabulous when the family is around for the weekend, or to give to someone as a home-made treat. It’s not so fussy that it needs to be immediately consumed (though that might just happen!). This was delicious! So, next time I’ll make those adjustments – and there will be one too!

You can see how the fabulous bakers at Tuesdays with Dorie made the granola bars and the vanilla cake by following these links.