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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