Mar 7, 2008

Treats for his Birthday...

Time sure flies fast. My son just turned 4. I think this is the age where they look forward to treats and celebrations. Treats for kids in class, which should be non-messy, no-frosting ones and better if healthy, like I mentioned in an earlier post. Well, wanted to try these absolutely great 'Bar cookies' as Deeba called them ever since I saw them at her amazing blog. I also had my eye on those yummy Tutti-frutti cookies that Purnima made sometime back and was waiting to bake them ever since. Thought these two would be a great snack to send to school for Divit's B'day...Was difficult for us to keep those few from goin to school, so that explains how good they tasted :)..Thanx so much Deeba and Purnima for sharing these excellent keeper recipes with us.



For the Bar Cookies or I'd like to call them Fruit bars..

Ingredients

Butter or Margarine - 100gms
Light brown sugar - 1/2 cup
All-purpose flour - 1 cup
Baking powder - 3/4 tsp
Salt - a pinch
Eggs - 2
Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp
Ground Almonds - 1/4 cup
Dried Cranberries - 1/2 cup
Black raisins - 1/2 cup..(original calls for golden ones)
A combination of chopped pitted dates, dried peaches and dried apricots - 1/4 cup ( I added these, but original recipe doesn't use them)
Pistachio nuts, roughly chopped - 1/2 cup

Method

- Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking dish with a 2" depth ( I used 8"X8" ).
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside.
- Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs one by one and then the vanilla essence.
- Then, gently fold in the flour mixture, ground almonds, cranberries, pistachios, dates and raisins.
- Put the batter in the baking dish and level out evenly with a spatula.
- Bake in oven for 25-35 mins until brown on top or till knife inserted comes out clean. Mine took 25 mins to bake.
- Cool completely before cutting into pieces and then dust with powdered sugar.

P.S: Pistachios are the best thing in this bar as per me, just tastes divine..
- This is best stored in refigerator ( as per Deeba's note)..

And now, coming on to the delicious Tutti-Fruitti Cookies.....

I cheated here in taking a short-cut and buying the store-bought ready-to-use cookie dough. Plus, she said that in the recipe from Pushpa, it was mentioned we can use a combination of dried fruits in this. So I did that. I have a history of destroying cookies, so due to lack of time, didn't want to take a chance with them. Well, I didn't spare the ready-to-use dough also, the first batch was a disaster. I know myself too well now, so had bought extra ;)..Learnt a lesson from the first batch and then tried the second one. Absolutely great tasting cookies, got a great feedback from the class and the teacher. So Purnima, all thanx to you for sharing this excellent recipe with us.
For the actual recipe followed by Purnima, check here.


I used..

1 roll of the refrigerated ready-to-bake cookie dough
1 1/2 cup of dried fruits which included dried cranberries, pears, apples, raisins, apricots and peaches - Finely chop all these.

This is what I did...

- Slightly break the roll of dough, add all these chopped fruit pieces in it. Mix well till all the fruit is uniformly distributed in the dough and knead.
- Out of this, I made 2 thin cylindrical logs, rolled it in a sheet of plastic wrap and chilled it in the refrigerator for about 3 hours. (this dough was already refrigerated when I bought it, so didn't take much time to chill and set again).
- Then, once firm and chilled, slice the logs into rounds and place these on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- In a preheated oven at 350F, bake for about 10-13 mins, or until the cookies turn light brown.
- They will look light brown on the edges and slightly undone in the center. But they will harden on cooling.
- Cool completely before storing.


Also, a big thank-you to dear Purnima and Dhivya for passing on this lovely award to me. Really kind of you girls to think so of my blog, but I think I have a long long way to go. Thanx so much, and I am really honored for your thinking so.

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10 Comments:

Purnima said...

Maya, all the 3 images are not getting displayed :( donno if its bloggers mistake or mozilla firefox's! Gr8 cookies these were,I too am thankful to the sources -Deeba,Pushpa for sharing them - hw contagious few posts are, aren't they? :D These sure are keepers, dont even need to bother on storage!! :D

FH said...

Those fruit bars look perfect, so moist and colotful. Big 4, huh? :D
Happy B'day to him. I have 2 kids b'days in about 1 week. 17th and 13th birthdays!:))
Enjoy the award, chocolate chip cookies looks yum.

Vanamala Hebbar said...

Maya Congrats :)

Fruit cake & cookies looks cute......

Shilpa said...

A very happy birthday to your little one Maya. Loads of love and wishes to him. Those are very nice treats.

Seema said...

Happy B'day to your little one! What a great treat for him.. loved cookies & fruit bar..

Deeba PAB said...

Well done Maya...the bars & cookies look great! I am so so glad that you've taken to baking big time.The kids must be thrilled!!

Uma said...

Happy b'day to your son, Maya! the bars look perfect, but I can't see the other pictures. Please check that. Congratulations on your award.

Dhivya said...

happy birthday to ur son!!!!!the bars andcookies look great and yummy...congrats on ur award

AnuSriram said...

Looks gr8... Delicious... Hope ur son had a wonderful celebration... Best wishes to him... Congrats on your award..

Meera said...

I was waiting for all these treats!! Everything looks so delicious. Hope Divit had a great day!! best wishes to him.