Blackberry Pie Bars (Gluten-Free)

I've recently had a major schedule change, which added four fatty, glorious hours to each of my weekdays. That being said, I feel like a whole new person. Like a vacationer that takes PTO but doesn't travel anywhere.

I get to go running in the morning.

I get to spend time with my friends, when we pick blackberries and then stuff ourselves with $2 beers + $2 tater tots (see you next Tuesday at the Cloverleaf!). 

I get to see my husband in the morning. and again in the early afternoon. oh, and yet again in the evening, when we get to have dinner together.

(Said husband is still determining if he likes this new schedule of mine.)

Just kidding, he totally loves having me around 35% more. Mainly because I get to bake these:

May I present to you: Blackberry Pie Bars, for your next gluten-free, blackberry-containing baking endeavor.

These suckers are addictive. Luckily, I'm the new girl at work and trying to earn some brownie (uhm, bar?) points so I brought some in for my co-workers to snack on...because of course I will use food to wiggle into your heart.

Lucky for you, blackberries are sprouting up everywhere these days (at least if you're in the PNW). I started picking them not having an iota of a thought as to what I would do with them, but let me tell you: the internet will not fail you. I'm sure you have such knowledge, but just in case you forgot: the internet has all the answers for all the things.

I found this recipe from our dear friend Martha, and it adapted to gluten-free flours perfectly. They are almost custard-like in the middle, and almost require a fork, but not quite. My edges turned out crispy, which were a nice contrast to the juicy insides.

I followed the recipe and used greased parchment paper as a liner, but I found it was difficult to separate the bars from the paper, as it was almost too wet from the oil. I would try simply greasing the pan straight-up, or using tinfoil if you don't want to bake them directly in the pan.

Blackberry Pie Bars
adapted from Martha Stewart
makes 16 bars

 6 tablespoons melted, unsalted butter
1/2 cup room temperature butter
1 1/4 cups almond meal (separated)
1/2 cup potato starch (separated)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 t vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups fresh blackberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8x8 baking pan (see lining notes above).

2. For the topping: In a small bowl, mix together the melted butter, brown sugar and 1/4 t salt. Add 3/4 cup of the almond meal and 1/2 cup of the potato starch and mix together until fully incorporated. Store in fridge while you prepare the remaining recipe.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk the remaining 1/2 cup almond flour, 1/4 cup potato starch and 1/4 t salt with the baking powder. Set aside.

4. In a large bowl, cream together the room temperature butter with the powdered sugar and vanilla until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Add the eggs in one at a time, beating after each egg. Add in the flour mixture and thoroughly combine.

5. Spread the batter evenly in the pan and sprinkle the blackberries evenly on top. Crumble the refrigerated topping on top, breaking it up into little pieces as you cover the berries.

6. Bake for about 40 minutes and let cool completely before cutting.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch Bars (Gluten-Free | Vegan)

We had our one year marriage celebration this past week (yaaaay!), which of course landed on one of our busiest nights. He had a 9:30pm softball game while I had a work event in the morning, which pushed my day back to about 8pm. However, it was our one year - we would make do with a small hour window of time.

I made a quick pasta dinner, which we ended up eating in about 11.6 seconds flights beeecccaaaause...

CAKE! That is a whole one year old, just like our marriage! (However, I would like to think that our marriage has maintained and flourished with its fresh, sweet flavor, while the cake might be heading the opposite direction.)

It was, nonetheless, delicious. Because it's cake, and who cares if it's been in freezing temperatures for a year straight? Not homegirl.

Anyways, the moral of the story here is that when you celebrate your anniversary and your husband leaves you for California at 3:45am the following morning, you do NOT whine and throw a pitiful fit. Oh no. Don't do that. It gets you nowhere.

Instead, embrace the fact that you have 3 days to listen to your songs at top volume while making endless messes in the kitchen, which are your messes only that you get to clean up.

End result? Chocolate peanut butter bars.

  

 

The second I saw this recipe pop up in my Google Reader I knew - those will be mine. And it was as menacing as that reads.

As you can imagine, the marriage of peanut butter and chocolate deserves to be celebrated on an annual basis.

Wait...is there a chocolate and peanut butter anniversary? Have I been skimping on an important holiday my past 26 years? If that was the case, I would need to make up for lost time. 26 days of chocolate peanut butter for all the household! (=2 people. Can I order a new, larger, wardrobe with that?)

I'm sure I don't need to get into it, but I will. These are delicious. I scaled back on the sugar and added in the last handful of un-crunched rice crispies at the end, but other than that I made no changes to this recipe...and you can see the grand product. Just awful. You should probably just make them and bring them over to me to eat for you.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch Bars
from Peas and Thank You

1/2 cup vegan margarine or butter, melted
1/2 cup and later 2 T creamy peanut butter
1.5 cups and later 1/2 cup whole rice crispies
1/2 cup oats
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2/3 cup chocolate chips

1. Crunch up 1/5 cups of the rice crispies nice and good; add to a large mixing bowl with the melted butter, 1/2 cup peanut butter, oats and powdered sugar. Combine fully, and stir in the last 1/2 cup un-crushed rice crispies.

2. Push down into an 8 x 8 or similar-sized dish and flatten on top.

3. In the microwave, melt together the chocolate chips and last 2 T ob peanut butter in 30-second intervals, stirring in between. Pour over the batter, spread evenly, and refrigerate until set. Eat and drool.

Lemon Raspberry Frozen Yogurt (GF)

Sun is awesome. We had a nice dose of it last week, and it felt like we finally had a summer that was going to stick around.

However, sometimes I feel like a major grump, because when all someone hears is sun, sun, sun, sun while they sit at work, work, work, work, the sun has the opposite feeling of cheery because it's totally a tease. How dare it try to lure you outside when your desk is buried somewhere with your mind and you can't seem to find either of them.

Too bad this is real life, and I need to buck it up and handle my adult duties. Whomp, whomp.

Anyway, so it's sunny like mad and then comes the weekend and Seattle gets thunderstorms. Seriously.  On the weekend. And that's when I decided to make fro-yo.

This was super easy to make. I tried it out with vanilla soy yogurt, because i had never tasted it before. It turned out great, but I'm sure regular vanilla yogurt will work just dandy, too. This is also verrry lemony, so if that flavor isn't your thing, feel free to leave out the zest altogether to make the lemon more subtle.

Also, I added in the raspberries at the last moment, since they were nice and fresh and juicy and from the Farmer's Market and why not?

Raspberry Lemon Frozen Yogurt
Adapted from Back to Her Roots

1 cup vanilla yogurt
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
zest and juice of one lemon
1/4 cup honey
1 cup washed, fresh raspberries

1. Combine all the ingredients but raspberries in a bowl. Put into fridge to chill for about an hour.

2. Freeze according to your ice cream maker's instructions, adding in the raspberries about 15 minutes after it's been mixing.