Chocolate Chip Cranberry Milk Bars

Corn harvest has finally gotten here.  It is no surprise that it is not a bumper crop for our area.  We have been in a roller coaster ride of weather that can be perfectly explained as "Feast or Famine."  Our area is either too wet or too dry.  I know what you are thinking...farmers are never happy with the weather, but seriously hear me out.  It rained almost the whole month of April and then it quit.  We may have gotten a few showers if we were lucky at isolated fields, but we were back in a drought.  Then the end of July came along.   Our area got close to 20 inches of rain over 3 weeks!  Now, here we are almost the middle of September and we haven't seen any rain for weeks and it is hot, dry and dusty again.

Well anyway, we are busy Picking Corn  and no, it isn't Sweet Corn.  It is always nice to have a sweet treat in the noon lunch boxes that we pack everyday.  I really love making bar cookies and if they have a little fruit in them all the better.

My son and I found the original recipe over on the Ocean Spray Website.  We changed a few of the ingredients around trying to make a recipe to compete at the county fair, but in the end he decided on a totally different recipe.

Chocolate Chip Cranberry Milk Bars

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1½ cups quick or old fashioned oats

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup dried cranberries

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Grease a 13x9 inch baking pan

Beat butter and brown sugar in large mixer bowl until creamy.  Gradually beat in flour and oats until crumbly.  Stir in morsels, cranberries and pecans; reserve 2 cups of mixture.  Press remaining mixture onto bottom of prepared baking pan.

Bake for 15 minutes.  Beat cream chees in small mixer bowl until smooth.  Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk.  Pour over hot crust; sprinkle with reserved crust mixture.  Bake an additional 25-30 minutes or until center is set.  Cool in pan on wire rack.  Cut into bars.

Makes 36 bars.

What is your favorite quick treat for a special lunch treat?

-A Kansas Farm Mom

W4DW- Hello Dolly Bars

What's for Dinner Wednesday?  A recipe my kids can make all by themselves!  My boys love to help out in the kitchen.  They like it even better if I sit on the other side of the counter and stay out of the way!  These bar cookies have lots of names that I have heard over the years

• Magic Cookies
• 7 Layer Bars
• Hello Dolly Bars

We like to call them Hello Dolly Bars just because we made them for a 4-H demonstration and it made for a cute talk.  :)

Hello Dolly Bars

2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup butter
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch or peanut butter chips
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1 can sweetened condensed milk

I like to make them in a 9x13 inch baking dish.  Most recipes call for 1 cup of graham crackers, but we prefer to make them with 2 cups mixed with 1/2 cup butter.  Press this mixture into the bottom of the baking dish.   Layer the other ingredients in order and pour sweetened condensed milk over the top.  DO NOT STIR.  Bake at 350*F for 25 minutes.  Cool and cut into bars. 

The next time the kids say we need cookies for school don't say "Oh No!"  instead say "Hello Dolly!!"

-A Kansas Farm Mom

W4DW- Nut Free No Bake Cookies

It's not Wednesday, but I have another recipe to share with you this week.   I hope you enjoy this one as much as my kids do.  They can even make them by themselves.

The holidays are upon us and that means almost everyone is looking for yummy cookies and candies to make.  My oldest son made this recipe for the county fair this last year.  One of his cousins had made it before and won Grand Champion, so he really wanted to try it out.  I kept asking what was so special about THIS no bake cookie that it could beat muffins and baked cookies.  Her dad would say, “It’s like eating a candy bar.”  After trying it myself, I agree it IS like eating a candy bar.

My youngest son is in a school that has a student with a severe nut allergy.  Nothing is allowed in the school that has nuts or has what I call the nut allergy statement on the packaging.  We used to grow sunflowers on our farm and learned about Sunbutter.  It is a peanut butter substitute made from sunflowers and therefore contains no nuts.  My kids really like it, so I thought we would try this cookies with the Sunbutter.  Turns out my boys really liked them.  Our local drug store, Porter Drugs, carries Sunbutter in their gift section.  Everyone always seems to want to try it before they buy it.  If you are in town this weekend for the Christmas parade, be sure to stop by and try one of these cookies made with Sunbutter and if you did stop by and are visiting my blog for the first time to get the recipe-THANK YOU!  I hope you will come back again and see what we are doing on the farm.

Chocolate Yummies

1 cup sugar

1 cup white corn syrup

1 cup chocolate chips

1 ½ cups Sunbutter or peanut butter

3 cups crisp rice cereal

1 cup mini marshmallows

Heat sugar and corn syrup and boil 1 minute.  Remove from heat.  Add chocolate chips, peanut butter and cereal.  Stir until well mixed.  Add marshmallows and mix well, but do not over stir.  Drop by teaspoonfuls onto wax paper.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

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