Sunday at the Bar...bar cookies, that is!

I haven't been able to bake recently - busy schedule that included my nephew's graduation from his Lutheran pre-school. Highlight of the program: 4 1/2-year old girl yelling out one of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shall not commit adultery!!"

Then, I decided to try and bake a little cake for Paris Hilton. (Just between you and me, I was going to bake in one of those little rock hammers that Tim Robbins used in my favorite movie Shawshank Redemption). Just when I finalized the design, she gets sprung! I burned up the plans...and, well, you know what happened. ;)

Today, June 10, 2007 was my attempt at carrot cake and bar cookies. Okay, we'll start with the good news. The bar cookies: Raspberry Bars, Cream Cheese Brownies and Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip bar cookies.

I used Baking Illustrated for the Raspberry bars (page 494) and Cream Cheese Brownies (page 488). My new blade for the Cuisinart came in and I was a food processing crazy person today!! I chopped up my own pecans and chopped veggies for a batch of split pea soup (not a dessert!) I've never used the Cruisinart before, and it is a new friend of mine.

I also want to confess my love for the digital scale. It sooooo rocks! The scale saves a bunch of time measuring flour, sugar, chocolate chips, and other good stuff. It is a good thing, and lets me pretend I know what I'm doing. (At work, we have this incredible amazing copier/scanner machine that makes the fastest .pdf documents that you can email to people...oh, I love that machine...okay, I digress).

The Cream Cheese Brownies were a basic brownie mix with dollops of a cream cheese mixture throughout. I was supposed to marble the cream cheese through it with a knife...but I think it came out dorky. I need to work on my marbling technique. The Raspberry bars were pretty easy, but I think it would be better with a more flavorful jam. Finally, I threw together the Toll House Chocolate Chip bars after I discovered a jelly roll pan under the sink! I cut everything small so you could have all three items and not feel that guilty!

Today, I went to see Ocean's Thirteen at the Mann Westwood Theatre. It was great! No, probably not going to win an Oscar...but who cares!? It was like returning home to bunch of old friends...George, Brad, Bernie, Andy, Matt...and a surprise appearance by Super Dave Osborne! Anyway, go see it for two hours of fun.