Meeting-friendly snacks to bake

[Anna N]

Usually I get immediate feedback about the baked goods I send off with my son-in-law to enjoy with his sales staff.  This week nothing. So I jumped to the conclusion that the ANZAC biscuits were quickly and quietly binned. I would not have been too surprised  even though they had grown on me in the meantime.  But my son-in-law showed up for a quick visit today and couldn't say enough about how his staff loved the biscuits. They all felt they were eating granola and hence something quite healthy but very good. Who knew?  

[Anna N]

 

 I always feel a little like I am cheating when I make brownies.   They just seem too easy.  But I also know I never get a complaint.  

[Tri2Cook]

7 hours ago, Anna N said:

 

I always feel a little like I am cheating when I make brownies.   They just seem too easy.  But I also know I never get a complaint.  

Fudgy, moist, chewy chocolate cake... doesn't leave much room for complaint.  

[Anna N]

9 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Fudgy, moist, chewy chocolate cake... doesn't leave much room for complaint.  

 I have never learned to like brownies.  

[Tri2Cook]

3 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 I have never learned to like brownies.  

They can become a bit much easily. Rich and sweet. Smallish pieces and a cold glass of milk on the side for me... but I do like them.

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

 I have never learned to like brownies.  

 

Me neither.

[chromedome]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

 I have never learned to like brownies.  

I'm in the non-brownie camp myself. 

 

Though I've found that a small bit of leftover batter, stirred into walnut halves (just enough to hold the walnuts together, basically) works pretty nicely when baked. 

 

[Anna N]

 Forgot completely about taking photographs this week but my son-in-law just sent me a text message saying that the carrot cake I made went over very well. I could not find my recipe but adapted one from the Canadian Living site replacing the nuts that it called for with raisins (apologies to all of you who think raisins are grape mummies).   I also did not ice it.  I find that icing on a carrot cake is more than icing on the cake.

[kayb]

11 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 Forgot completely about taking photographs this week but my son-in-law just sent me a text message saying that the carrot cake I made went over very well. I could not find my recipe but adapted one from the Canadian Living site replacing the nuts that it called for with raisins (apologies to all of you who think raisins are grape mummies).   I also did not ice it.  I find that icing on a carrot cake is more than icing on the cake.

It's probably so old it's completely out of style, but I purely love the carrot cake from the Silver Palate cookbook.

 

[Anna N]

22 minutes ago, kayb said:

It's probably so old it's completely out of style, but I purely love the carrot cake from the Silver Palate cookbook.

 

 I am such a stick-in-the-mud. I make a sheet pan type carrot cake in a 9 x 13 pan and it cannot contain coconut because my granddaughter hates coconut and she always gets a taste of whatever I make for her dad.  Using cooked carrots was something I ran across when I was hoping to find my own recipe. Just seems strange.   But I acknowledge that the silver palate version is very popular.

[Tri2Cook]

40 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 Forgot completely about taking photographs this week but my son-in-law just sent me a text message saying that the carrot cake I made went over very well. I could not find my recipe but adapted one from the Canadian Living site replacing the nuts that it called for with raisins (apologies to all of you who think raisins are grape mummies).   I also did not ice it.  I find that icing on a carrot cake is more than icing on the cake.

Speaking as a person who, as you already know, is not a big fan of the raisin... never apologize for your raisins!

[Anna N]

 

 Deep, dark, and decadent. Not a single raisin in there. Made with a high-class chocolate (Belcolade Costa Rican) and espresso powder (Medaglia D'Oro). Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Brownies for people who hate brownies!  

[MelissaH]

59 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Deep, dark, and decadent. Not a single raisin in there. Made with a high-class chocolate (Belcolade Costa Rican) and espresso powder (Medaglia D'Oro). Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Brownies for people who hate brownies!  

@Anna N, I think I need that recipe. Could you share it, please? <checks fridge supply of cold milk>

[Anna N]

3 minutes ago, MelissaH said:

@Anna N, I think I need that recipe. Could you share it, please? <checks fridge supply of cold milk>

Sharing is what it's all about. 

[Anna N]

 I left a couple of these cookies for my cleaning angel and she informed me that she considered tearing my house apart to see if she could find more!   And the meeting people also devoured them in very short order.   This is always gratifying to me although I take little credit. Between the recipe and the quality of the chocolate I think it was hard to lose.

[lindag]

I'm not a huge brownie fan but I did make some once that I considered remarkable:

Clickety

 

[Anna N]

 

Hermits.  There are many downsides to not being able to do one's own grocery shopping much of the time. The dates that I thought I had in my pantry turned out to be date paste. As you can imagine this proved somewhat challenging.   I took some of the flour from the recipe and put it into a separate bowl and then stood in my kitchen for what seemed like hours pinching off small bits of date paste and tossing them in the flour to keep them separate. Of course to be on the safe side I had ordered two packs of "dates".   There must be a use for date paste.

[kayb]

5 hours ago, Anna N said:

 

Hermits.  There are many downsides to not being able to do one's own grocery shopping much of the time. The dates that I thought I had in my pantry turned out to be date paste. As you can imagine this proved somewhat challenging.   I took some of the flour from the recipe and put it into a separate bowl and then stood in my kitchen for what seemed like hours pinching off small bits of date paste and tossing them in the flour to keep them separate. Of course to be on the safe side I had ordered two packs of "dates".   There must be a use for date paste.

Convey tub of paste and bowl of flour to the living room so you can sit and watch TV while you pinch?

 

Mix it with peanut butter, unsweetened coconut flakes, finely chopped nuts, and a bit of honey, roll in balls, roll the balls in more flaked coconut, and keep them in the fridge. Wonderful little energy bite snacks.

 

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, kayb said:

Convey tub of paste and bowl of flour to the living room so you can sit and watch TV while you pinch?

 

Mix it with peanut butter, unsweetened coconut flakes, finely chopped nuts, and a bit of honey, roll in balls, roll the balls in more flaked coconut, and keep them in the fridge. Wonderful little energy bite snacks.

 

Thanks. Sounds way too sweet for me but might make up a bunch for the family. 

[Smithy]

9 hours ago, Anna N said:

 

Hermits.  There are many downsides to not being able to do one's own grocery shopping much of the time. The dates that I thought I had in my pantry turned out to be date paste. As you can imagine this proved somewhat challenging.   I took some of the flour from the recipe and put it into a separate bowl and then stood in my kitchen for what seemed like hours pinching off small bits of date paste and tossing them in the flour to keep them separate. Of course to be on the safe side I had ordered two packs of "dates".   There must be a use for date paste.

There are date paste-filled cookies.  Ma'amoul, as described in this topic, can be a labor-intensive cookie in which you make your own paste, but it can also be made with date paste. Linda Dalal Sawaya's cookbook, Alice's Kitchen, has a similar recipe for Date Cookies; she simplifies it by spreading the paste along one edge of a square of cookie dough, rolling it into a log, then slicing it crosswise into circles for baking. I imagine a pinwheel treatment would also work; Southern Living's a Date Pinwheel Cookie recipe uses whole chopped dates and walnuts...but you might be able to soften the paste, spread it over the dough, scatter the walnuts into the mix and roll the pinwheel log per the instructions.

[Anna N]

36 minutes ago, Smithy said:

There are date paste-filled cookies.  Ma'amoul, as described in this topic, can be a labor-intensive cookie in which you make your own paste, but it can also be made with date paste. Linda Dalal Sawaya's cookbook, Alice's Kitchen, has a similar recipe for Date Cookies; she simplifies it by spreading the paste along one edge of a square of cookie dough, rolling it into a log, then slicing it crosswise into circles for baking. I imagine a pinwheel treatment would also work; Southern Living's a Date Pinwheel Cookie recipe uses whole chopped dates and walnuts...but you might be able to soften the paste, spread it over the dough, scatter the walnuts into the mix and roll the pinwheel log per the instructions.

 I absolutely know I am going to come across as an obstructionist or a yabbut.   I just cannot imagine how you spread the stuff on anything!  It would be like mixing concrete doused with molasses and held together by Gorilla^TM glue.  But perhaps after a good night's sleep and/or a double scotch I will begin to see the light.   Thank you for sharing the recipes.  Perhaps overnight I will be invaded by hordes of sugar-loving critters who will haul both packages out of here.

 

[Smithy]

6 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 I absolutely know I am going to come across as an obstructionist or a yabbut.   I just cannot imagine how you spread the stuff on anything!  It would be like mixing concrete doused with molasses and held together by Gorilla^TM glue.  But perhaps after a good night's sleep and/or a double scotch I will begin to see the light.   Thank you for sharing the recipes.  Perhaps overnight I will be invaded by hordes of sugar-loving critters who will haul both packages out of here.

 

 

 I have never worked with date paste, so I wondered how bricklike the stuff might be.  It sounds too malleable to chop, too stiff to mold like Play-Doh^TM and roll into a tube.  What a shame! Scotch sounds like a good idea. Ants or squirrels may be even better...outside, of course.

[Kerry Beal]

I have successfully chopped some date paste before and used it in place of the blocks.

[MelissaH]

There are also a number of recipes in Joanne Chang's Baking with Less Sugar where the sweetener is dates that get simmered with a touch of baking soda until they turn to mush. Sounds like you may be able to use those recipes and skip that step.

[Toliver]

I like the idea of heating it to make it more malleable. Perhaps adding a little corn syrup to improve its liquidity/spreadability? The pinwheel method with chopped walnuts sounds brilliant.

All this talk of dates reminds me of Dateland, Arizona. It used to be a tourist attraction off the interstate on the way to Phoenix (there's a shop there today selling date-related goods). Once in a blue moon, my family would stop there and get date shakes to stave off the heat of the day when traveling during the summer in a car without air conditioning.