Have you ever had these bars at Starbucks? They are amazing. They have them on the menu in the winter, then they’re gone. And I love them.

I wanted to make them for my family when they all came for Christmas, so I went looking for the perfect recipe. This one wasn’t it. Now, that could be because they were way undercooked when I checked them after the time was up. So I left them in – and left them a little too long. But I still think there was something off about them  (at least for my taste).

I tried this one. Not what I wanted. I tried this one. Getting closer. I may have been obsessed at this point. I remembered once having used the blondie recipe from Taste of Home mentioned in the last recipe. I had modified it ever so slightly, and I loved it. So I decided to modify it again for my purposes here.

The biggest change? Omitting the cinnamon and adding chopped crystallized ginger. Perfect (for this these bars anyway). I also changed up the amount of salt, as I only buy unsalted butter.

And here it is in all it’s glory:

Cranberry Bliss Bars

blondie layer:
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted salted butter
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon finely chopped crystallized ginger
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
6 ounces white baking chocolate, coarsely chopped

frosting:
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon orange extract (or use vanilla extract and a dash of lemon juice in a pinch)

1/2 cup chopped sweetened dried cranberries
3 oz. white baking chocolate, melted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 13×9-inch baking dish with nonstick spray.

For the blondie layer:
In a microwave-safe bowl, melt butter. Add brown sugar and microwave until bubbly. Pour butter & sugar mixture into a large bowl and let cool. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until well combined. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt and ginger. Slowly add dry mixture to the butter mixture and mix just until it’s all combined. Stir in the cranberries and chopped chocolate.

Spread the blondie batter into the prepared pan. It’s going to be thick. So thick I had to use my fingers to press it into the corners. Bake for 18-21 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack. Really, don’t try to frost these when they are even a little bit warm or the top layer will come off with your frosting.

For the frosting:
Beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar until well blended. Add the extract and beat just a little bit more. Frost brownies, then sprinkle the chopped cranberries on top. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the top. Cut into bars to serve.

Now, you can serve these just how they are, and they’re fine. But if you put them in the refrigerator over night, they will be amazing. Seriously. Amazing. And now I think I will go eat the last one in my fridge leftover from this weekend.

]]> http://www.thebusybean.com/2012/01/cranberry-bliss-bars/feed/ 5 http://www.thebusybean.com/2012/01/wip-wednesday/ http://www.thebusybean.com/2012/01/wip-wednesday/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:47:37 +0000 Colleen http://www.thebusybean.com/?p=1341 Here’s to accountability! I’m linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday.

Finished:

A Valentine’s Day mini. Inspired by this piece of art on Etsy, a snapshot of graffiti in Paris. I loved it and thought it would translate so well into a mini quilt. I think it might just become a giant throw for my house as well. Super quick and easy. I even sewed a quilt with linen for the first time!

Mario Quilt

Little Apples Quilt

New Projects:

I played around with scraps to see if I really want to make Denyse Schmidt’s Single Girl quilt. King size for our new bed. I think if I had to cut out all the templates, I would say no way. I have no patience for that. Luckily, my friend Amber came up with a foundation piece pattern for the arcs. I’m so on it. I cut up my lovely fat quarter stack of Hometown by Sweetwater and started piecing.

Print Gallery Quilt. I am playing with the layout for a new quilt using Echo (Lotta Jansdotter), Impressions (Ty Pennington), and some Heather Ross fishies. I used this fabulous arrangement by Kati. Again, she is a design genius! I showed my friends her quilt and they just couldn’t stop browsing her finishes. And one of them is not even a quilter. (Please pardon the mess on my design floor. One day I’ve got to find a wall big enough in my house to have a real design wall.)

Next Up (a.k.a. No Progress):

Quilting my Heartstrings quilt before Valentine’s Day (since I pieced the top last year)

Quilting my Pure quilt, even though it is now too small for our bed

Finishing my Fenced In quilt

Finishing my string blocks quilt

Finishing all my little projects from my Strip Club at Quilt Etc. (my fabulous LQS).

Total for the week:

Finished – 3

New – 2

No Progress – 5

I bought a fat eighth set of Little Apples at quilt market. I love Aneela’s cute little children playing all their children’s games. I totally see my daughters and their cousins in the kids playing ring around the roses. And the hula hoop girl? Once upon a time (before I had babies) I could totally hula hoop. Maybe I can get in the groove again one day. Maybe.

So, I knew I wanted to do something circular with the fabric, to play off those hoops in the illustrations. I also loved seeing so many friends working up dresden plate quilts at one of our Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild Sewing Saturdays. Hence, the Little Apples Dresden.

I threw in some darker teal from Laura Gunn for the sashing and the centers. I love how it has a little red in it too that ties it together so well.

And I tried Kati‘s sew and slash and sew method on the back. I’m not in love with it (my finished product, not her method). I find I’m more a “I finished the front, now let’s slap a sheet on the back and call it good” girl. Although, if I start really thinking about the backs as I do the front, and think of them like a whole new quilt, not just a means to an end, I might have more fun with the backs.

We’ll see how that goes for me as I finish my seven WIPs. That’s right, I started another new quilt this weekend, so I’m back up to seven. I may have impulse control issues.

2,292 squares later, it is done. And I love it.

So does Lottie. Her new thing, every time I’m working on a quilt, is to ask me if I’m making her a new hiding place.

Each side square is one of the power-ups. I know, I mixed versions of the game, which my brother already gave me grief for. I know I have more than one 1up. And I’m totally ok with that.

The power-ups are pieced with squares finishing at 1″ each.

This year is the year of finishes. This is already my 2nd quilt finish, for the 3rd week of the year, that’s not too bad. No, I didn’t start either of these quilts this year, but my big New Year goal is to actually finish the quilts I’ve started. Amy asked me how many WIPs (Works in Progress) I have right now, and I counted seven. That’s just quilt WIPs, not counting anything else. Cross off two now, I’m down to five.

Of course, I started a new one today… so I guess I’m back to six.

I ordered their Dessert of the Month as soon as Amanda tweeted about it. It’s been nice to sit and pass the time with something small while Brad’s away this week on business. oh, and to re-watch last season of Downton Abbey before I start watching this season.

I really planned on making a sampler for the year, but when I was done with this cute little guy, I just couldn’t put him away until next month. I will still probably do a sampler, but in the meantime, here’s what I decided to do with my little desserts:

I cut squares of cardboard, batting and one of those refrigerator magnets that come advertising local businesses. Then I cut out my truffle a little bit bigger than those squares and snipped out the corners. Glue the batting to the cardboard, then cover it with the linen I stitched my truffle on. Glue all around the edge of the back side of the cardboard and wrap the linen around. Me more layer of glue on the back to attach the magnet and let it sit under something heavy for an hour or so.

When you’re all done, you’ve got a super cute champagne truffle magnet for your fridge. It was the perfect solution for me, since I have really no wall space in my kitchen. I’m sure I will do this with a lot more of my monthly desserts, then stitch up a sampler at the end of the year. This took no time at all to stitch, so I won’t mind doing it again.

And it got me back in the cross stitch groove! I’m ready to pull out an adorable snowman project I started so many years ago and never finished.

I’m just not sure, until you’ve met her, if you can understand how awesome my mom is. You’ll just have to trust me. She’s brave and strong and (almost always) nice and genuinely a good person.  So for Christmas, we wanted to do something really special for her. See, my mom also has Multiple Myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Just over a week from now, she will be checking in to the hospital for a nice long stay to have her 2nd stem cell transplant. She won’t be able to spend as much time with us as she normally does, so my sister came up with the idea of making her a quilt. Which means, I got to make her a quilt.

We started off with some kind of handprint idea, like our hands were helping her through it. All of her children and their spouses and her grandchildren used fabric paint and signed our names. This turned into a great label for the quilt, to show her who it was from.

I thought it would be fun to have everyone make a square for her. Since I’m the only one who quilts, and almost the only one who sews at all, I knew coloring was the way to go. I gave everyone a square of cream fabric and told them to draw her a picture with Crayola crayons. We got a great variety that really represents the members of our family.

Debbie played with words that describe my mom, and since we are all Words With Friends junkies (though neither mom nor I has been able to beat Debbie) it was quite appropriate to put them in this format.

Of course, the kids’ were the best, mostly scribbles, but they are very representative of the fact that they are all under four years old.

Sister taught all the kids to say I love you in sign language (she learned ASL to serve a mission for our church). She thought mom should always know how much we all love her.

And of course, there are the geeks. Like, all the boys. This is my husband’s cell phone geekery. My oldest brother had the vulcan “Live long and prosper” sign traced out with his hand, and other brother turned Grandma Glo into a super hero.

And this is the one we made mom color herself. Yeah, we are just that sneaky. On mom’s birthday all the girls got together for brunch and scrapbooking at sister’s house. I needed three extra squares to make an easy layout, so we gave the little girls some crayons and told them to color. Then we asked my mom to show them the bunnies she used to make. See, while my mom is an amazing painter, sketching isn’t really her strong point. Growing up, I remember these bunnies she used to draw all the time. I think it’s the only thing she can really draw besides basic shapes. I love those bunnies.

So, here’s the whole thing. I framed all of our colored blocks with a scrappy log cabin style and added the handprints at the bottom. Sister came over one night and cut all the strips for it from my scraps. I’ve got to say, piecing the top was so much faster since I didn’t have to do any of the cutting myself!

Now, I think mom’s only downfall (and it’s only a downfall as far as quilting is concerned) is that her favorite color is red. We wanted this to be soft and snuggly, so I backed it in red flannel. I washed the flannel several times before quilting it. I used color catchers, and Retayne and Synthrapol. I was not taking chances of this thing bleeding. But it bled anyway. I pulled it out of the washing machine just a few days before Christmas and everything was pink. And I cried. Like, sitting on my kitchen floor (next to the laundry room) just in tears because I ruined Christmas. Yeah, I may have been a little bit exhausted.

Thankfully, I have great friends that I can always count on. I called Kati and begged her to tell me it was ok and that the pink would come out. She was awesome, as always. She talked me down from my crazy and said that my mom was going to love it no matter what. She looked up when Lee had a similar problem and told me just what to try. So, I washed it several times with oxyclean, and the pink faded quite a bit. It’s still much more pink than cream, but I feel a lot better about it. I am truly blessed to have such great friends through this little quilting hobby.

And of course, mom did love it. She opened it on Christmas at my house and cried.

I think we did good.

We are getting ready for Christmas at our house.

Opening a present every night, one of our Christmas books or movies all wrapped up to be new again.

Decorating a gingerbread house.

Making lots of yummy treats to deliver to neighbors.

Sewing up a new table runner.

And a Christmas bunting to help out with displaying our Christmas cards.

And sewing gifts. Most of which I can’t show yet or it will ruin Christmas surprises. But I did already give this iPad cover to my wonderful mother-in-law.

And delivered these aprons to a friend. She was in possession of all of the vintage sheets her family grew up with. We I made aprons from them, six for the girls and one for the boy (his is not pink). That’s what she is giving them all for Christmas. Love the idea and how they turned out.

What are you making for Christmas this year? I had to scratch some things off my list because I didn’t start soon enough. But I’m really happy with the things that stayed on the list.

Then along came Lottie, and I had every intention of fixing our stockings and making one for her. She was born in May, and by Christmas I still hadn’t done it. So I went out and bought three stockings. Shameful. Add Kelsey the next year, and another (gasp) store-bought stocking. I grabbed two, just in case another kid came along and needed a stocking.

Last year my mom said she couldn’t believe that I had store-bought stockings. So shameful. Last week I decided to do something about it. At our Modern Quilt Guild meeting Shannon (I think) showed her stockings she started using Sherbet Pips. I loved them, and I had a fat quarter set laying around. I dove in, using a mix of Camille’s stockings, Allison’s double hourglass, and one of my (store-bought) stockings that was my favorite shape.

I used mostly Sherbet Pips, and threw in a little Ruby and DS Quilts for the green. I think I love them.

I tried to make Brad’s kind of manly, with not a lot of pink. His is the patchwork one on the end. Then comes Kelsey’s zig zag, Lottie’s pinwheels and my double hourglass.

I’m really glad I got them done, just in time to hang while we decorated the house Sunday night.

That’s about all I got done this week, but it was a big finish! And I’m finally finally linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday. It’s so much fun to see what everyone has been working on every week.

My caramel recipe is something of an accident. I have always been very happy with the recipe straight from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Most often, I make the quick version using sweetened condensed milk, since it takes a lot less time than the version with cream and I have two toddlers that don’t like me to stand at the stove for an hour straight. One day, I wanted caramels. So I grabbed everything and started boiling and stirring. I love the look of boiling caramel, how about you?

Well, after boiling for about 20 minutes, it hit the right temperature, and just then I remembered that my neighbor had borrowed my vanilla. I couldn’t wait to get it back from her, so I improvised. I grabbed my almond extract from the spice drawer and I’ve never looked back.

Sprinkle a little coarse salt on top once the caramel is in the pan, and you’ve got caramel heaven.

Here’s the recipe

Salted Almond Caramels
recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1 cup butter
1 16-ounce package (2 1/4 cups) packed brown sugar
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
(or 2 cups half-and-half or light cream)
1 cup light colored corn syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
Coarse salt

1. Line a 9x9x2-inch pan with parchment paper, make sure to line up the sides. Set aside.

2. In a 3-quart heavy saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk and corn syrup; mix well. Turn heat to medium-high and cook until mixture boils. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and reduce heat to medium. Continue boiling at a moderate, steady rate, stirring frequently, until thermometer registers 244 degrees F (just under firm-ball stage), about 20-25 minutes (or 50 if using cream).

3. Remove pan from heat and stir in almond extract. Pour immediately into prepared pan. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Let the pan sit until caramels are firm, about 3 hours. Turn out from pan onto a cutting board and cut into 1″ squares with a sharp knife. Wrap in waxed paper. Enjoy!

makes about 10 dozen caramels (perfect for wrapping in little bags and giving to neighbors so you don’t eat all of them yourself)

Eggnog ice cream. Here’s what you need.

Really, that’s it. Since eggnog already has the whole egg custard thing going on, I hoped it would work. It did. I just added a little vanilla extract to prevent the eggnog from crystallizing.

Here’s how to do it:
Pour 1 quart of eggnog into your ice cream machine. Add 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract. (you could do something like 1T rum, if you want to be all “authentic” but I don’t drink, so I used extract I had on hand.)

Mix according to the manufacturer’s directions. (mine was 20 minutes) and just like that you’ve got ice cream!

I made these cookies, baking them only for 10 minutes, and made my ice cream sandwiches with it. Delicious. And super easy and fast!