A few years ago, the Los Angeles Times started an annual Holiday Cookie Bake-Off. I tried a couple of the winning recipes from the first bake-off in 2010 (these peppermint pinwheel cookies and these bourbon balls), but for some reason I hadn't tried any of the holiday cookie recipes from subsequent years. Until I saw a recipe for Sweet Tart Oat Nut Bars -- one of the top ten recipes from the 2011 bake-off -- in the newspaper's recently released Holiday Edition California Cookbook.
I happen to love prunes, and I was intrigued by this oat bar cookie with prune-nut filling. To make the filling, you simply use a food processor to pulse together prunes and orange juice, and then stir in walnuts. I was a little short on prunes (I had only eight ounces), so I made up the difference with dried cherries.
The crust and topping of the bar is a mixture of butter, brown sugar, honey, egg, salt, baking soda, flour, and rolled oats (wheat germ is listed as an optional ingredient, but I didn't have any, so I skipped it). You spread half of the mixture into the bottom of a pan, cover it with the prune filling, and then use the remaining batter for the top of the bars.
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My bars did not look much like the ones in the recipe photo. First, even though I had dropped the dough in bits that left some of the prune filling exposed, the topping expanded in the oven to create a solid layer; I didn't have any pretty bits of filling peeking through. Also, the tops of my bars were very dark, even though I had tented the bars with aluminum foil partway through baking when I saw how much color they were taking on.
When I cut the bars, I was surprised how soft they were. I was expecting a bar with a very firm bottom crust. Instead, both the top and bottom layers were fairly soft (although they held their shape); the texture reminded me a lot of the soft pastry in a Nabisco Fig Newton or a Nutri-Grain bar. And with the fruit filling, the bars reminded me a lot of fig newtons in general, except for the bit of crunch for the walnuts in the filling. Even the flavor of the filling was not easy to identify as prunes and cherries, and it could easily have been mistaken for fig (I have never thought that the filling of a commercial fig newton tastes much like a fig anyway).
While I thought these bars tasted fine, I didn't think they were anything particularly special. The soft texture was not appealing to me personally. But my tasters really liked the bars and several raved about them. Still, unless I have some prunes on hand that I need to get rid of, I don't think I'll be making these again.
Recipe: "Sweet Tart Oat Nut Bars" adapted from Ronna Ballister, printed in the December 15, 2011 Los Angeles Times and available in the Holiday Edition California Cookbook.
I happen to love prunes, and I was intrigued by this oat bar cookie with prune-nut filling. To make the filling, you simply use a food processor to pulse together prunes and orange juice, and then stir in walnuts. I was a little short on prunes (I had only eight ounces), so I made up the difference with dried cherries.
The crust and topping of the bar is a mixture of butter, brown sugar, honey, egg, salt, baking soda, flour, and rolled oats (wheat germ is listed as an optional ingredient, but I didn't have any, so I skipped it). You spread half of the mixture into the bottom of a pan, cover it with the prune filling, and then use the remaining batter for the top of the bars.
.JPG)
When I cut the bars, I was surprised how soft they were. I was expecting a bar with a very firm bottom crust. Instead, both the top and bottom layers were fairly soft (although they held their shape); the texture reminded me a lot of the soft pastry in a Nabisco Fig Newton or a Nutri-Grain bar. And with the fruit filling, the bars reminded me a lot of fig newtons in general, except for the bit of crunch for the walnuts in the filling. Even the flavor of the filling was not easy to identify as prunes and cherries, and it could easily have been mistaken for fig (I have never thought that the filling of a commercial fig newton tastes much like a fig anyway).
While I thought these bars tasted fine, I didn't think they were anything particularly special. The soft texture was not appealing to me personally. But my tasters really liked the bars and several raved about them. Still, unless I have some prunes on hand that I need to get rid of, I don't think I'll be making these again.
Recipe: "Sweet Tart Oat Nut Bars" adapted from Ronna Ballister, printed in the December 15, 2011 Los Angeles Times and available in the Holiday Edition California Cookbook.
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