Apron Free Cooking ~ Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

By Noel Lizotte

The hol­i­day bak­ing sea­son has begun. It prob­a­bly started a lit­tle before Thanks­giv­ing, since we had all those pies and rolls for din­ner. But the bak­ing that has started at my house is the Christ­mas cookie plate sort of baking.

While I admit to hav­ing a bit of a sweet tooth, for most of the year, sweet treats are slim pick­ings in my house. Mostly it’s a way of avoid­ing the inevitable, that I would eat too many goodies.

But dur­ing the hol­i­days, I give in to the temp­ta­tion and start bak­ing, to my family’s delight. I’ve started this sea­son with some cook­ies already, and will progress through a list of cook­ies, brown­ies, can­dies and breads.

I like to put together a plate of good­ies to share with folks dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. There are plenty of peo­ple who we inter­act with on a reg­u­lar basis, that are not on the gift exchang­ing level. We’ve trimmed our gift giv­ing con­sid­er­ably in recent years. In fact, we exchange gifts with the imme­di­ate fam­ily (myself, hus­band, son, daugh­ter and daughter-in-law). There were some years when we were buy­ing gifts for nearly every­body we knew. That was over­whelm­ing. So we stopped doing that.

Instead, we’ll give a plate of home­made good­ies to folks we’d like to share with. The plate will have some tra­di­tional Christ­mas sugar cook­ies, buck­eye candy, choco­late cov­ered pret­zels, brown­ies, choco­late chip cook­ies and bite sized pieces of banana and pump­kin breads.

The cookie plate seems to always bring a smile to folk’s faces. They truly appre­ci­ate the thought as well as the sweets!

Choco­late Chip Cookie Bars

1 1/4 cups Brown Sugar firmly packed

3/4 stick Butter

2 table­spoons Milk

1 table­spoon Vanilla

1 large Egg

1 3/4 cups All Pur­pose Flour

1 tea­spoon Salt

3/4 tea­spoon Bak­ing Soda

1 cup Semi Sweet Choco­late Chips (6 ounces)

1 cup Pecans coarsely chopped, optional

Pre­heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahren­heit. Grease a 9×13 inch bak­ing pan. Place cool­ing rack on coun­ter­top. Place brown sugar, short­en­ing, milk and vanilla in large bowl. Beat at medium speed of elec­tric mixer until well blended. Add egg; beat well. Com­bine flour, salt, and bak­ing soda. Add to short­en­ing mix­ture; beat at low speed just until blended. Stir in choco­late chips and pecans, if desired. Press dough evenly onto bot­tom of pre­pared pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahren­heit for 20 to 25 min­utes or until lightly browned and firm in the cen­ter. Do not over­bake. Cool com­pletely on cool­ing rack. Cut into 2×1 1/2 inch bars.

Make It a Meal: Serve with your pref­er­ence of milk, tea of cof­fee for an after­noon snack. Include a cou­ple bars in your lunch bag.

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Infor­ma­tion: Serv­ings Per Recipe: 36, Amount per Serv­ing: Calo­ries: 109, Total Fat: 5g, Cho­les­terol: 2mg, Sodium: 146mg, Total Carbs: 15g, Pro­tein: 1g.

Pay close atten­tion to the amount of your ingre­di­ents. The last time I made this recipe, I got dis­tracted and switched the amounts of sugar and flour. Those cook­ies never did set up but stayed a gooey gooey mess! Of course, my daugh­ter and hus­band had a field day with that mishap. I noticed though, that didn’t stop them from eat­ing the entire batch!

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! This recipe is sim­i­lar to ones printed in her cook­book Apron Free Cook­ing which is avail­able on the web­site www.apronfreecooking.com. She also writes a monthly col­umn at www.culinarychat.net.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on Nov 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.