One day in early May, my husband was making dinner and about to put something in the oven. He pulled on the oven handle and it wouldn't open. The self-clean latch had mysteriously locked itself shut, even though we hadn't run the self-clean cycle. I didn't know it at the time, but it would take more than a month to get a replacement latch and have our oven repaired, and in the meantime I had to limit myself to no-bake projects.
While I can make a lot of caramels and cereal treats without an oven, I used the opportunity to try a lot of no-bake recipes that I might not otherwise attempt. First up was Erin Clarkson's "No-Bake Peppermint Slice," which has a chocolate-graham-coconut crust topped with peppermint icing and chocolate. There's nothing complicated about the recipe, but it requires several freezing/chilling steps, so you need a few hours to complete the bars.
To make the crust, you pulse graham crackers with sugar, cocoa, and salt; transfer the mixture to a bowl and add shredded unsweetened coconut; mix in melted butter; and press the mixture into a parchment-lined pan. You put the crust in the freezer while you make the peppermint icing, which is a mixture of powdered sugar, room temperature butter, peppermint extract, vanilla paste, and boiling water. I spread the peppermint icing on the cold crust and chilled the bars until the icing was set.
The crust was a little crumbly when I sliced the bars, so as you can see in the photo above, the bars had ragged edges where bits of crust had fallen off. I had pressed the crust into the pan quite firmly, and I'm not sure if adding a little more butter might have helped the crust adhere better (but I note that the bars pictured in Erin's blog post also appear to have ragged edges, so I don't think her crust stayed entirely intact either). The peppermint icing layer was creamy and soft-set, which I liked.
These bars were delicious. They were very minty and the mint filling evoked the center of a York Peppermint Pattie; the strong dose of cool peppermint was perfect with the dark chocolate topping and substantial base. The crumbly nature of the base was a bit annoying (you definitely needed a plate to eat one of these, and small chunks of crust fell off with every bite), but it was a small inconvenience considering how much I enjoyed the slice. This recipe is a wonderful option whenever you don't want to -- or can't -- turn on the oven!
Recipe: "No-Bake Peppermint Slice" from Cloudy Kitchen.
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