Some More Bake Sale Recipes
I’m a bit behind, but I decided this was a good week to get caught up on recording these recipes. Slowly, but surely, we’re making progress trying new “bake sale” items from the Old-Fashioned Bake Sale Cook Book. Here are some of the ones we’ve tried since the last post, a year ago!
Chunky Pecan Pie Bars
Sometimes it’s a challenge trying to find an ingredient called for in the recipe. That was true for this one. You’d think Nestlé Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunks would be easily found in the grocery store, but not in the ones around here! We had to wait for them to arrive after ordering them online. However, it was worth the wait. These are delicious cookies!
They’re comprised of a shortbread crust topped with the gooey chocolate-pecan mixture. And if you can’t find chocolate chunks, regular chocolate chips would be a great substitute.
Nestlé Chunky Pecan Pie Bars
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup corn syrup
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chunks
1 1/2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped
Combine flour, butter and brown sugar; my preference is to use a small food processor. Press into bottom of 9x13" pan and bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes.
Beat together eggs, corn syrup, sugar, melted butter and vanilla until smooth. Stir in chocolate and pecans. Pour over cooked crust, spread evenly, and bake an additional 25-30 minutes, or until set.
Cool on wire rack before cutting into bars and serving.
This recipe also called for semi-sweet chocolate chunks, but it didn’t specify Nestlé brand, so we used the Aldi’s store brand ones I found. I couldn’t taste any difference, but there was a definite cost difference. Use your favorite blonde brownie recipe and add some chocolate and macadamia nuts. These made a nice addition to our Christmas treat cookie platters.
Blueberry Crisp Cupcakes
More of a muffin than a cupcake, and they stick to the paper liners. Kind of a disappointment. However, we’re still making it twice, once with butter and walnuts, and another with margarine and pecans.
Strawberry Stripe Refrigerator Cake
I had great hopes for this dessert, because it looked similar to our favorite Jello Cake. However, if you’re going to poke a cake and pour liquid over it, stick with jello and not just pureéd berries. That just made it soggy, even on the first day, and it took us a week to eat the entire thing. (Also, note that the strawberry garnish started going moldy after a couple of days, but removing the berries and sticking the cake in the freezer saved the rest of the pan.) The topping of pudding and cream, though, was absolutely delicious!
We also tried the Neapolitan version of the recipe, using a chocolate cake mix instead of a white one, and decided we preferred the white cake.
Three-in-One Chocolate Chip Cookies
The mini cookie variation was definitely more time consuming, but at least the calorie count per cookie was greatly reduced!
As a reminder, the first variation was a giant, pizza-sized cookie; the second was slice and bake “refrigerator” cookies.
We tried this pie a couple of different ways as well – once with unsweetened whipped cream and once with ice cream. Guess which one we preferred? We also realized the first time through that it didn’t need to cook nearly as long as the recipe suggested, so we took the second pie out ten minutes earlier and it wasn’t nearly as dry. However, it’s not something we plan on having again; remember somebody doesn’t care for coconut.
There is one other story that goes with making this recipe. We’re in the middle of the pandemic and trying to avoid grocery shopping. On my last shopping trip before “sheltering in place” for a month I was able to purchase everything we needed for our planned upcoming recipes. However, I ran out of time to stop at our “ice cream” store, and decided then that I would probably want milk and fresh produce in a couple of weeks anyway, and I’d get ice cream at the same time. Fast forward those three weeks. We did run out of lettuce and tomatoes, and were down to just apples and canned fruit, but the whole idea of actually NOT going to the store had turned into a game, and we were doing just fine with everything else. Was it possible to make ice cream at home, without a trip to the store, when there was only 1/2 cup of cream in the refrigerator? It turns out it was possible, and we were quite pleased with the results. Now you can be, also, if you ever find yourself in the same situation!
Pandemic Ice Cream
1 1/2 cups evaporated milk (one can)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups sweetened condensed milk (one can)
Pour the can of evaporated milk into a bowl and freeze for 30 minutes. Then beat with a hand mixer until nice and fluffy. Add the chilled cream and beat again until nice and fluffy. Gently stir in the sweetened condensed milk until smooth. (You want to keep it nice and fluffy!) Pour into a 9x5 loaf pan. Freeze until firm, overnight is best.
Note: DON’T try beating again after freezing for a couple of hours; you’ll “let out” all the air you worked so hard to beat into it. Fortunately, I only scooped out half of it to try that experiment. However, if you do forget, the “flat” ice cream still tastes delicious. This doesn’t reach the standards of our favorite ice cream – it’s a bit icy and melts too fast for that – but it was the perfect topping for our fudge pie. And we avoided a trip to the store!
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