One of my favorite vintage cookbooks is the Better Homes and Gardens Homemade Cookies Cook Book, 1975 edition.
A recipe I use often, and modified to suit my tastes is a bar cookie called Revel Bars. When I tell people what they are called they never remember it right and instead call them Rebel Bars, which I think the bars find endearing. Also, I enjoyed this photo from the book. I remember my grandma had an oven in that pea-green color.
With an oat-base (I've substituted spelt for some), and a chocolate-nut middle, these bar cookies are addictive. The recipe also makes an entire 9x13" pan full, so it can feed a crowd, or your family for a few days. These bars don't last long in our house. If you want, you can also freeze the baked bars for longer storage.
Revel Bars
230 g unsalted butter (1 cup), room temperature
350 g light brown sugar (~1 & 2/3 cup)
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
170 g rolled oats
90 g spelt (or you can sub rolled oats for a total of 260g)
300 g flour (2 1/2 cups)
1 tsp baking soda (zuiverings-zout in NL)
3/4 tsp salt
1- 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (don't use evaporated milk!)
340 g semi-sweet or dark chocolate (chips, or chopped) (2 cups)
28 g butter (2 Tbsp)
150 g chopped, toasted walnuts (can use hazelnuts or pecans) (1 cup)
2 tsp vanilla extract
With the paddle attachment in a stand mixer (or by hand) cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beat until combined. In another bowl, mix oats, spelt, flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir this into the butter/brown sugar mixture until blended. Set aside.
In a heavy saucepan over low-med heat stir condensed milk, chocolate, and butter. Once smooth, take off heat and stir in vanilla and nuts.
Pat about 2/3 of oat mixture into an ungreased 9x13" baking pan. Spread chocolate mixture over oat layer. Clump remaining oat mixture on top of chocolate layer. Some chocolate will not be covered.
Bake at 350 F (180 C) for 30-33 minutes. Rotate pan half way through baking. Cool, cut into bars.
The condensed milk can be found here in NL at the Rohit store I've blogged about. It is not the same as evaporated milk. Condensed milk has sugar in it, evaporated milk does not.
Yes, evaporated milk costs 10 cents more, because the can is bigger. Funny thing, they are almost exactly the same weight and both described on the cans as 'Rich & Creamy'.
Be a rebel and make these Revel Bars as soon as possible. They are amazing.
Before my daughter's third birthday I asked her what she wanted for her party theme. She was not sure and we spent a lot of time looking at cakes. At some point we were looking at the photos from when she rode a carousel in Obernai, France, and she got excited about a carousel theme. Sometimes looking at assorted pictures to discover a theme is even better than looking at cakes!
Grateful for the challenge, I spent time researching carousel cakes online, and considering how I could suspend the top cake. As it turned out, one of our drinking glasses was just the right thing for the center. Lucky for me, my husband likes to both sample and give advice on my cakes and he said there was 'no way' one single glass in the center was enough to support the top tier, without it potentially listing to one side. Cake dowels would do the trick- stuck right down into the bottom two tiers of cake all the way to the top tier, and also double as the poles for the four horses. And wouldn't it be great if the whole thing could spin? I thought why not use my old-school decorating spinner as a cake base to make it rotate just like a real carousel. Made it easy to decorate, too.
The horses were made from sugar cookies. A benefit was they could be made a couple days in advance.
It is almost impossible for me to make a cake without coordinating cupcakes, but I was concerned about the complexity of this particular cake so I simplified the cupcake decorations by using the (now discontinued) Wilton waxed carousel horse candles. Yes, I found them on discount, and bought them early in the planning process because they were so cute I could not resist them!
I rolled out ovals of the white marzipan and in advance painstakingly placed colored sprinkles in a design to spell out Happy 3rd Birthday Dina (as a test of my patience), as well as a bike, boat, and hot-air balloon. Allowing them to dry on the side of the cake pan I planned to use for the top layer made them the right shape.
We printed a large poster of Dina on a carousel in Rome, as well as the inspirational one of her in Obernai, France to cover our normal artwork in the living/dining room during the party.
Dina's talented Uncle Dan made the invitations and the pin the tail on the carousel horse game for us.
Naturally, our dog Lacey was riding the horse.
As if the day could not get any better, my neighbor, who owns ponies, stopped by when she saw our balloons to see if Dina wanted to sit on a pony on her birthday. Totally unplanned, and completely perfect.
All in all, Dina was thrilled.
I found a colorful banner at our local Albert Heijn (grocery store in
NL) and it was completely customizable, although I had to create the
little 'RD' superscript for the number 3.
Fortunately, I had help from my mom in the decorating and babysitting (it is impossible to spend this kind of time on a party without help from grandparents!) and my dad in the food preparation. He made his famous meatballs, snack sized! Now you know where my love of making food comes from. Check out these mouth-watering meatballs.
The top cake layer took some advanced planning, so I did end up making a test cake to be sure I had the details right.
I made a cardboard template to enable carving the top layer into a peak. As you can see I only put a little circle of cake on the top to start with as the very top comes to a steep peak, so most of it was shaven away with a serrated knife.
In order to make the red stripes on the top the right size, as well as for the sizing of the ovals on the side, I needed to determine the spacing, hence the toothpicks shown on the basic buttercream frosted top below.
I created all my templates when I did the test cake, which made the final cake go smoothly.
The red stripes on the top tier were marzipan and the alternating white was the buttercream underneath. I used marzipan for the red stripes to make it easy (despite the red dye warning they include on the packaging here), and I choose to not serve the red part to the kids.
The cake below the horses was a two tier cake- the very bottom an 8 inch butter cake with strawberries and cream, and the middle tier a 6 inch (to match the 6 inch top) chocolate with ganache filling, both frosted with the fancier Swiss buttercream.
These cake recipes are a hit with a crowd, and this version was no exception. To assemble, I 'glued' a small piece of round cardboard to the glass in advance and then placed it into the frosting on the bottom tiers, dotting buttercream around the side to hold it in place. The dowels were inserted, measured and then cut to size. I also dotted around the dowels with buttercream for looks.
When I assembled and frosted the top tier with the stripes, I did so on a special cardboard round I had previously made so that the glass would nestle into the bottom (two layers of cardboard to fit inside the glass):
Next, the top tier was placed on the supports, fitting the small glued circle into the opening of the glass. I dotted buttercream around the edge of the cardboard after I placed it.
The dark purple was also marzipan, and the only piece of the cake that I would have done differently if I could do it again: the floppy-ness of the accents in between the ovals on the top tier disappointed me. I kept trying to keep them from flopping over (see photo below- that's my irritated smile look).
For favors, I made smaller horse sugar cookies and packaged them in bags with each child's first initial to seal them shut. Other tidbits included a noise-maker, temporary tattoos, band bracelets, Belgian chocolate, and a candy stick (which were originally going to be the poles for the horses, but didn't work out structurally). The bags matched the banner and were also found at AH.
This cake was one of my favorites that I had made (at the time, over a year ago) and I am certain it was the planning ahead that ultimately made it possible.
Now I need to catch up on my posts and show you Dina's 4th birthday cake!
A long time in coming, this post explains my hiatus from blogging. Our sweet baby, Leo, was born at the end of April this year. He, like his sister before him, was yearned for, after many losses, and joyfully welcomed with open arms and hearts. Being pregnant with him was nothing like Dina's pregnancy: we knew from the start he was here to stay because Dina explained to us she dreamed an angel told her that I would have a baby. From that day on (around the time of conception), we did not worry. If hours went by with no movement from baby, I would close my eyes and somehow I could see a little boy, with a shy-smile, sleeping. When we finally decided on his name, mere days before his due date, he was born the following day.
Dina loves her little brother so much. We feel so blessed to have both of these beautiful children in our lives.
The past seven months have been a whirlwind of wonderful. Dina is in primary school (school in the Netherlands starts on a child's 4th birthday) and she brought in cupcakes along with her baby brother in June to introduce him to her class. Let me bring this back to cake for a bit:
In the Netherlands when a child is born, friends and family come to visit and the snacks served are called beschuit met muisjes, roughly translated to biscuits with mice. The muisjes are candy coated anise seeds, good for breastmilk production and sold in adorable pink-and-white or blue-and-white. The muisjes are cute and tasty and the round, dry, packaged biscuits are less so. For these cupcakes to be served at school (four to six-year-old kids), I used shorty cupcake wrappers from HEMA with the star theme (our choice for Leo), and topped the light blue frosting with blue and white muisjes, to celebrate the birth of Leo.
Dina handed out the cupcakes to her class, and her teacher got to hold baby Leo.
Over the past seven months, Dina has loved holding her brother, although lately he has been a bit more on the move and tougher to hold for very long!
During this time I've been baking, and many posts are in the mixer, so to speak, including a wedding cake!
Cake is love. Most especially when celebrating the birth of a child. Happy Birth Day, Leo! We welcome you!
When my friend Jessica asked me to make her son's first birthday cake, I felt so honored. Every child's birthday is special and a first birthday is especially so! Jessica is such a creative person- the party could not have been more gorgeous. The invitations were plane tickets! The color scheme was blue and orange- absolutely perfect. Ahead of time, I made a gum-paste plane and white chocolate banner (actually I made several of each- to allow for breakage) as well as some teeny tiny gum-paste blue birds. The only non-edible part of the entire cake was the small piece of tooth-pick I used to spin the propeller on the plane. I felt it just had to be able to spin!
I used a round tip 10 for the clouds and top border and a round tip 12 for the bottom border, piping with my recipe for Basic Buttercream.
Just before placing it, I made a small 'rope' from gum-paste to connect the banner to the airplane.
Since the birthday boy loves birds, tiny blue birds adorned the clouds. They were challenging to shape due to their small size. I started with a pea-sized piece of gum-paste, rolling it into a cylinder, then pulling the wings from the sides and tail and beak from the front and back. I used a toothpick to add the eyes and a bit of feather texture on the wings and belly.
The birthday boy needed his own cupcake to taste, so I made him one using Wilton's 2D tip and a round tip #3 to make the white dots. Topped it off with a Number 1 candle from HEMA, one of my favorite stores in the Netherlands.
In order to create the curved banner in white chocolate I needed to have it dry on something curved in the same shape. I used a cardboard tube from a paper towel roll, cut in half and re-taped together to form the "S" shape. After piping the white chocolate banner on waxed paper I carefully lifted it onto the "S" and let it dry there overnight. The following day I piped the dark chocolate lettering, "Liam is 1!"
From the moment Jessica explained her request and theme I knew I was going to have a blast making this cake. It was a pleasure to create and I feel so lucky to have been a part of a very special boy's first birthday.
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