Hey All, there was a blizzard here in Madison overnight! We got about 15 inches of snow but that wasn’t the worst part of the blizzard…the wind gusts blew the snow around creating huge snow drifts. On my walk into the department I waded through knee deep and even sometimes waist deep snow drifts. Even if the roads are clearing up my car is absolutely buried under snow. In fact I think the plow for the parking lot pushed all of the snow up against my passenger side door and then under the car. Since I am kind of stranded at home this evening I thought it would be a good time to write up another post.
This is a recipe for vanilla nut bars and it is adapted from one by Ina Garten. These are crisp shortbread bars with a chewy addictive nut filling. I had made these bars for the Christmas boxes that we had out to people in our department. This year everyone pitched in and our boxes were overloaded with goodies…it was awesome! Even though I had made pumpkin cheesecake bars, sweet potato cupcakes, candy cane cupcakes, chocolate crinkles and mini lemon tarts, I could not keep away from the nut bars. In fact, they were kind of an oops, because as I started cooking the filling I realized that the recipe called for 1 pound of pecans, which I didn’t have. So I scrounged for one pound of any kind of nuts. I think the final mixture included chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds and cashews. Maybe there were even a few macadamia nuts thrown into the mix for good measure. In the end the bars came out delicious, so go nuts (haha…sad humor) and put in whatever type of nut you feel like and it will still turn out great. The recipe is fairly simple, but I would suggest having all the ingredients out and ready to go before you begin making the filling. Have fun and go nuts!
Vanilla Nut Bars
Ingredients:
Crust:
20 tbsp (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter softened
6 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs
½ tsp vanilla
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
Filling:
16 tbsp (2 sticks) unsalted butter
½ cup honey
1 ½ cups light brown sugar
1 ½ tsp vanilla
2 tbsp heavy cream
1 lb chopped nuts
- Preheat oven to 350°F and spray a 9×13 baking pan with baking spray.
- With an electric mixer, beat together the softened butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl in-between each addition. Mix in the vanilla.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt before adding to the butter mixture. Mix until all the ingredients are completely incorporated.
- Press the dough into the 9×13 pan and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden. COOL completely before making the filling.
- In a saucepan, combine the 16tbsp of butter, honey, light brown sugar and bring to a boil. While heating, constantly stir to prevent scorching the sugar mixture.
- After the mixture boils gently for 3 minutes, remove from the heat and stir in the heavy cream, vanilla and chopped nuts. Be careful! The mixture might foam up a little when you add the heavy cream.
- Quickly pour the mixture over the cooled shortbread bottom in the 9×13 pan and bake for 20 minutes. Cool until the bars are set and then enjoy!
These bars are seriously addictive so plan on sharing unless you want to take out a whole pan by yourself. Enjoy!