gooey chewy fruit madness

Last year, the day after I clawed my way out of the Pit of Despair which still held the Chief Taster in its slavering maw, I discovered that I finally felt well enough to go to the Cookie Exchange that evening.

Ever been to a cookie exchange?  The name should tell you everything you need, but I'm going to lay it out anyway, because it is magical.  Remember the old days, when people would try to impress other people with their culinary skill and baking mastery by single-handedly making and delivering several dozen different kinds of cookies to every person they knew?  It's the edible version of the annual Christmas letter.  Look how great I am!  I made thirty different kinds of cookies in just under two weeks, and here's your share!  some of them might still be fresh!  Enjoy reveling in my awesomeness!  WHOOOOOOsnorecollapse.

Then the Interwebs happened, and people learned to crowdsource holiday baking, giving rise to the noble Cookie Exchange.  You make one kind of cookie.  Two, if you feel ambitious.  Then you take your cookies to someone's house, which in my case was packed full of strangers, four people I knew, and a dog which ignored me when the children began to arrive.  Everyone puts their cookies on a great big table, and when you're ready to leave, you take a few cookies from each of the piles, and you get to have all the tasty variety of baking lots of different cookies after only making one or two recipes.  Brilliant!  Plus, if the people you invite to your exchange are the ones you would've given all those plates of cookies to anyway, you've not only shared your baked bounty with them, you've tricked them into baking part of it!!

The Chief Taster, as I mentioned, was still coughing and sneezing, and thus opted to stay away from other people's food, but I went with another friend, and learned the real secret of cookie exchanges: stay until the end.  Most people left early, and felt bad taking too much, so by the time there were only six or eight of us left, the table was still groaning under the baked burden.  I had to borrow an extra container to take my share of what was left.  On the other hand, the hosts had already learned the other lesson of cookie exchanges: be careful with the invitations.  They mentioned one person who had come the previous year and took all of a couple varieties of cookies, thereby completely missing the point of the exchange, and absconding with far more than they had provided.  They weren't invited to the exchange I attended.

I took one of my all-time favorite cookies.  The Chief Taster told me what she wanted to take (even though we both knew she wasn't going), but the invitation had specified that we were to bring four dozen cookies, and her recipe had a yield of 16 bars.  I didn't want to make three batches of them, so I made one, and didn't take them to the exchange.  That meant we got all the bars, which wasn't a bad idea.

Brandied Cranberry-Apricot Bars (From a very old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook)
2/3 C golden and/or dark raisins
1/3 C dried cranberries
1/3 C snipped dried apricots
1/3 C brandy or water
1 1/3 C all-purpose flour
1 1/3 C packed brown sugar
1/3 C butter
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1/3 C chopped pecans
powdered sugar

you need this much fruit

• Combine fruit and brandy in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and let stand 20 minutes before draining.

• In a medium bowl, mix 1 C flour and 1/3 C brown sugar.  Use a pastry blender to cut in butter until mixture looks like coarse crumbs.  Press mixtures into an 8x8 baking dish, then bake at 350F for 20 minutes or until golden.
• While the bottom crust bakes, make the filling.  Beat the eggs in a medium bowl.  The book told me to use an electric mixer on low speed for four minutes, but I used a whisk or a fork, because I really only use the electric mixer for whipped cream and waffle batter.  Add remaining flour and brown sugar, and the vanilla, stirring well.  Stir in the fruit and nuts.  Pour over hot crust, spreading evenly.

Real fruit filling!

• Bake 40 minutes or until it passes the toothpick test.  (you can cover with foil for the last 10 minutes to prevent over-browning, but that wasn't a problem for me)  Cool on wire rack, dust with powdered sugar, cut into bars.

This is what mine looked like, after baking but before the powdered sugar.

These are really tasty bars, and on a few morning I had them for breakfast, but the really astounding part is how long they lasted.  I baked them a  few days before Christmas, we took them with us to Ohio, the Chief Taster brought some of them back from Ohio, and they were still waiting for me when I returned in the second half of January.  I had a bar tat night, and they were still good.  Keep them sealed, and keep them away from me, because although they survived a solid month with the Chief Taster--who had specifically requested them--they were gone within a couple days of my return.