We spent a (very) blustery and cold first day o’ the new year cozily at home getting our last bits together for a Last Gasp of the Season Open House later on today.
Since, by it’s very nature, an open house is a wicked casual kind of thing; we’ve tried to keep the food casual and easy as well, with nothing needing to be eaten while fresh from the oven and blazing hot, or, for that matter, straight from the freezer and ice cold. I’ll cover some of the savories, old and new, tomorrow or Tuesday, but today we’ll visit cookies one more time.
Rich did a facebook poll and ended up with votes for M&M cookies (Toll House Cookies with red and green M&Ms), and some chocolate chip bar cookies – both based on the traditional recipe – tho’ we like to use a 50/50 mixture of butter and good solid shortening; and 50/50 dark brown and granulated sugar.
I came across this cookie recipe looking for a way to use up some cherries and coconut left over from some of Rich’s earlier holiday baking. This makes a darned tasty bar cookie, tho’, NEXT time – I am making this as a cherry coconut tart – the base crust is THAT good. As a matter of fact, I’ve stashed the bits o’ crust shards left in the pan from cutting the bars in the freezer to use as an ice cream topping.
It was either that or stand over the pan and eat them all myself then and there. Freezing seemed the more rational way to go.
INGREDIENTS
•1-1/2 cup flour
•3/4 cup butter, at room temperature
•5 tbsp powdered sugar
•3 eggs
•1/4 cup flour
•1 cup sugar
•1/4 tsp baking powder
•1/4 tsp salt
•1 tsp vanilla
•1 cup pecans, chopped
•1 cup coconut
•1/2 cup maraschino cherries, drained – next time, I’ll go for a whole cup
Heat oven to 350º.
Mix first 3 ingredients and pat into a buttered 13 x 9 pan. bake for 20 minutes.
Stir remaining ingredients into eggs & spread over crust.
Bake 20 – 25 minutes more.
Cool & cut.
I will admit, I do love cherries, pecans and coconut together, so can easily see a tart version appearing here before long – I just need an occasion and enough people who don’t dislike cherries, coconut and pecans 😉