Cranberry Oat Bars

So much for staying away from the sweets recipes. I found a recipe on the HoHo site today and mucked about with it and made these bars. Here's my version of the recipe:

Cranberry Oat Bars

Filling:

3/4 c dried cranberries

1/2 c seedless jam (I used a mixture of blueberry, Dundee, and blackberry)

1 Tbl. lime juice

Oats part:

6 Tbl. butter

1/2 c brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 c flax

1/2 c all purpose flour

1/4 c whole wheat flour

cinnamon

nutmeg

ginger

1 1/2 c old fashioned oats

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease and flour 9x9 inch pan.

3. Prepare the filling by combining the ingredients in a food processor and processing until smooth.

4. For the cookie part cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.

5. Add egg and vanilla and mix well.

6. Add flours and spices and mix well.

7. Stir in oats.

8. Spread a little more than half the batter into the bottom of the pan.--This was another case of being more like cookie dough than cake batter. I used the back of a spoon with some oil sprayed on it to smooth out the dough.

9. Smooth out the filling over the dough.

10. Place remaining dough in spoonfulls over the filling and spread evenly.--That is easier said than done, and my dough didn't completely cover the filling.

11. Cook for 30 minutes.

12. Allow to cool completely before slicing.--This is supposed to make 15 squares, but I couldn't decide how I wanted to cut them, so I had a bunch of different sized squares.

These turned out okay. I felt like they were missing something. Might be better with ice cream.

Bran Muffins

I wanted muffins for breakfast this weekend, but I wanted something other than the flax muffins. I found a recipe online and modified it. My modifications worked much better than my "changes" to the yellow cake recipe. I found another yellow cake recipe. Maybe I'll try it next week.

Ginger Oat Bran Muffins

1 c. all purpose flower

1 c. whole wheat flour

1 1/2 c. oat bran

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/3 c. brown sugar

3 Tbl. flax meal

1 Tbl. ginger

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 c. molasses

2 c. buttermilk

1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Butter muffin tins.

3. In a large bowl combine dry ingredients.

4. Stir in molasses, buttermilk and egg.

5. Spoon batter into muffin pans to fill to 2/3.

6. Bake for 20 mins.

This recipe amazingly made a full 24 muffins. I made half of the muffins with chocolate chips and the other half with raisins. I ate one right out of the oven with butter on top. Milk. Yummy.