An Apple A Day

It took us a long time to choose a recipe from the Cathedral of Holy Trinity’s Cookbook, which is featured in our previous post.  Since we made a casserole last week, we decided on another mid-western staple: the bar cookie.  Kevin has been super-busy at work lately and I know the other engineers could use some treats to help them get through their long days, so cookie-bars seemed like a perfect choice.  Moreover, we had some apples that needed a new lease on life, so we decided on Apple Bars!  I was a little skeptical about the ingredient list (mainly the Corn Flakes), but they turned out perfectly!

As you can see from the recipe below, there is a layer of cornflakes above the apples, and we couldn’t figure out why they were there!  After tasting the finished bars, I realized that the cornflakes soak up the liquid that the apples release as they cook — if the cornflakes weren’t there, the bars would be soggy!  So this is the last time I question the use of cornflakes in cookies, I promise!

Overall, this was a *really* solid recipe.  Here are a few notes from the cooking process:

1.  I didn’t have a pan with the correct dimension, so I used a brownie pan and cut back on the recipe accordingly.

2.  I used butter instead of lard, and cut the butter into the flour mixture using Kevin’s grandmother’s dough blender!  It was the first time we used it and it worked perfectly.

3.  As with most pastry dough, this dough needed some time with the rolling pin to really solidify into something workable.

4.  I used Pink Lady Apples, because that’s what I had on hand, and they worked perfectly!

5.  As you can see from the above photo, I lined the brownie pan with foil to make for easy cutting.

6.  When the bars were still warm, we worried that they were going to fall apart, but by the time the bars had time to cool, they were perfect and tasted just like apple pie!

4 Comments

  1. Reply
    Kate March 11, 2010

    Yummy! I love apples and this would be a great way to enjoy them!

    • Reply
      alison March 11, 2010

      I think the ladies at your office would love them! (just don’t tell them how much butter!)

  2. Reply
    dawn March 11, 2010

    These look totally droolworthy…definitely ear marking these to make soon.

    • Reply
      alison March 11, 2010

      Oh, do make them — I was really surprised that they were so yummy! 🙂

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