Lemon Bars

I used to have a friend and co-worker who made the most amazing lemon bars. We demanded them for every occasion at the office and it was always the choice in lieu of cake for birthdays. Unfortunately, I don't have her recipe but this one is a pretty close second!

As you know if you read this blog even rarely, I love all things lemon. In fact, I was discussing with my doctor this week my love of lemon going back to childhood when I was known to suck on a cut lemon as a snack. Yes, I am warped. But, I must also attest to the healing powers of citrus.

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Iced Georgia Squares

A cross between shortbread and a cake. That's about the best I can describe these little cookie/cake squares from a recipe by Paula Deen. I liked them but Michael thought they were too "powdery".

At any rate the recipe given in her book was about half of what is actually needed for the size pan she uses. I've doubled the recipe here so that it should fit nicely in a 9x13x2 pan.

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Peanut Butter Bars

Here's another Paula Deen adaptation for you. I love anything with Peanut Butter and this simple bar cookie looked delicious. It's a fairly quick and easy recipe to do and the taste is outstanding. I could definitely see this working with some chocolate, either as a drizzled icing or even frosted or layered. I may experiment with this recipe some in the future and see what types of variations with chocolate and peanut butter I can come up with.

As it is, you'll find the peanut butter alone quite wonderful and rich. A note of caution when making this, though. For those of you unused to working with hot ingredients and eggs, remember to let this cool before adding the eggs or make sure you temper your eggs before adding to the hot peanut butter and melted butter. Otherwise you'll end up with scrambled eggs in your peanut butter and somehow I don't see that becoming as popular as Reese's!

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Paula Deen's Blonde Brownies

One of my favorite gifts this year was a copy of Paula Deen's very first cookbook from the Lady & Sons Restaurant in Savannah. My friends Sandy & Jeff presented it to me this past week during our "After Christmas Dinner" at Firebird's here in Tucson.

I decided to try one of Paula's early recipes titled "Aunt Glennis's Blonde Brownies" this morning. The result was a wonderful rich and chewy blondie chock full of pecans and chocolate chips. This would be great served slightly warm with a scoop of ice cream and perhaps a nice maple butter sauce (a la Applebee's). The two cups of chopped pecans were a bit more than I normally like in my brownies so in future I will probably scale it back a bit or use much smaller pieces. I substituted milk chocolate chips in the recipe since I didn't have semi-sweet in the pantry after the Christmas cooking. I don't think either would be bad in this one. I'd also like to try some butterscotch chips in this recipe too.

I think you'll enjoy this one since it's fairly easy to do and turned out great.

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