Oatmeal Brownie Milky Way Bars

The last couple of weeks of summer have been pretty good for me. I was cast in an opera, Pillsbury featured my last blog post, I've been logging some great miles in training for a marathon, and I've been hanging out with a bunch of friends, old and new.

I've also stumbled upon many great recipes! (When I first typed that I spelled "upron." I wonder what an upron would be. Some fancy type of apron without strings?)

Anyway, I digress. One of those awesome recipes I found was this one for Oatmeal Brownie Milky Way Bars from the great site, i am baker. 

I haven't used a boxed brownie mix in a long time so these tasted a little weird to me due to that. However, they are still very yummy and GREAT when microwaved and topped with vanilla ice cream. And if you'd like to use a brownie recipe made from scratch, I'd suggest the tried, tested, and true Supernatural Brownie recipe. 

Oatmeal Brownie Milky Way Bars (from i am baker)

Oatmeal Milky Way Brownie Bars

2 cups Old Fashioned Oats

2 cups flour
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 1/2 sticks room temp. butter
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups boxed brownie mix (I used dark chocolate)
1/3 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 bag (11 oz.) caramel squares
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 Milky Way bars
(If you are using the Supernatural Brownie recipe, you can use everything called for in that recipe in place of the flour, sugar, butter, baking soda, salt, brownie mix, oil, and egg.)

In a medium sauce pan, place the two Milky Ways, entire bag of caramels, and half cup of heavy cream. Let simmer over medium to medium low heat until fully melted. Remove from heat and let cool approximately ten minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl combine oats, flour, baking soda, salt, brown sugar, and butter. Either use a fork to incorporate or use hands to combine. The chunks of butter should be no larger than the size of a pea.

Add in two cups of brownie mix, egg, and oil. Stir until just combined.

Using a prepared 9x13 baking dish, spread half of the oat mixture into dish and press firmly to flatten. (Make sure you don't use more than half because you won't have enough to cover the top.)

Pour the melted Milky Way mixture over the oat mixture. Make sure to get all the way to the corners.

Top with remaining oat mixture.

Bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes.

Bake well and prosper!

A Man Named Ron

Woohoo! I'm back to baking and this blog post has a recipe.

So, while I was in Ireland, (Wait.....real quick! Check out my cute oven mitt and pot holder from Ireland! Look! A Black sheep. This goes well with my goose measuring cups, giraffe teaspoons, and alligator rug. :) Yay!)

It says baaa! So cute!

Ok...back to what I was saying. While I was in Ireland, a loyal follower of my blog and a fellow running friend on twitter decided to swim, bike, and run in Coeur d'Alene. This is an IronMan race, which means it's a race that only crazy people do. 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile run. Um, that's 140.6 miles altogether and that's just wrong!

Ron's been teasing me in his comments on my blog posts that he deserves a dessert after this race since he didn't eat too many sweets while training for this insane event.

Well, the joke's on him because today in the mail is a box of goodies. One of the treats happens to contain these:

Mmmmm! Rolos. (I'm not sure what kind of joke sending cookies is, but just go with me folks.)

I stumbled upon the recipe for Rolo Cookies and my eyes liked what I saw. Seeing the Nerd's Wife is a Texan, I knew I could trust her recipe. (Interesting fact about me today: I was born and raised in Texas.)

Moving on.

Check out the thickness of this cookie dough! It was crazy. And yet, it wasn't thick enough to completely stick to the beaters. Please note the mess on my fridge on the left side of picture.

These cookies were very fun to make because they involve doing a magic trick.

Place Rolo in dough. Now you see it....

Now you don't! TADA!

Rolo Cookies (from thenerdswife)
Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups of flour

3/4 cups cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup butter

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 pkg Rolos
A bit of sugar for garnish

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat sugars and butter until fluffy.

Add vanilla and eggs to mixture.
Beat until combined.

Combine flour, coca, and soda.

Add flour mixture to fluffy mixture.

Unwrap the Rolo candies. (Erika's Extras: I found it helpful to unwrap the Rolos before I even started making the batter. It takes awhile to unwrap them!)

Shape about a teaspoon of dough around each Rolo.

Be sure to cover it completely.

You want it to be about the size of a golf ball.
Press one side of the dough ball into the leftover sugar.Place sugar-side up on a baking sheet, about two inches apart.

You'll end up with about three dozen cookies. If you don't want to make that many right away, just put the dough balls in a Ziploc bag and freeze them.

Bake for eight minutes until the edges start to crisp.

Erika's Extras: Wait to cool a bit, and then devour when the rolo is still slightly warm and gooey. Mmmm!

Let's see a close up of these. Super yum!

Bake well and prosper!

C is for Charleston...and Cookie

Last week I was in Charleston, SC and that's why I didn't post anything....or at least that's the excuse I'm giving. (Don't you worry though! I still baked! I made the Malibu Rum Supernatural Brownies [There IS Nature in NYC] for a Memorial Day pool party.)

Even though my allegiance is to NY, I also heart Charleston. It has GREAT food, friendly people, wonderful music during the Spoleto Festival, nice beaches, fantastic history and historic houses, and beautiful iron work.
Every house in historic Charleston has some type of ironwork. (I think it's a law.) ;) I also think it's a law that the sky has to be the perfect color of blue during the summer.
Many of the old houses are painted in very cheerful colors (check out Rainbow Row if you go.) This house is painted with a color I shall name "Chaw'ston Orange."

After tons of shrimp 'n' grits, southern drinks, and sunshine, I headed back to the big apple. Of course, I needed some chocolate for my flight back so I bought Almond Joy Pieces (which is probably in the top 10 on my list of favorite candy.)

While eating them I realized that I HAD to use them in a cookie. So I decided to make chocolate chip cookies with coconut flour and the Almond Joy Pieces instead of the chips.

While using them, I realized that the blue pieces seemed to emulate the color of the Charleston sky.

And once I baked them, I realized that I had the perfect shade of "Chaw'ston Orange" to capture the goodies on.

The result? Well, they were yummy!

Almond Joy Candy Cookies

Use this chocolate chip cookie recipe [Mixed Messages] but substitute 2 Tablespoons of flour with coconut flour. Then use Almond Joy Pieces (see below) in lieu of chocolate chips.

Bake well and prosper!