#35, White Chocolate Pecan Bars

“This bar cookie has a really nice brown sugar shortbread base with a topping of white chocolate and pecans.” (p. 63)

The star of the show! This is turning out to be a white chocolate week.

Basic rule of life: Start at the bottom and work your way up. This rule is not always obeyed by clever or lucky people. Where am I going with this? I don’t know. Just wanted to point out that I prepared the topping for this cookie before preparing the dough. See how my brain (doesn’t) work(s).

Chop, chop! My version of roughly chopped white chocolate bars and French walnuts. Both of these piles are destined for the topping.

All of the brownie and cookie doughs that have lots of stuff inside need a strong spatula for mixing. I use my gelato scoop. I’ve mentioned this before, but love the gelato scoop so thought I’d mention it again.

TECHNIQUE NOTE: When mixing things like chocolate chips and chopped nuts into a stiff dough, I use the folding technique that is used to fold whipped egg whites into batters. Why? 1) its my way of achieving a more even distribution of stuff throughout the dough, and 2) I want to be careful with some things that I don’t want to smush.

THREE QUICK IMAGES

Spreading the thick, thick, thick batter onto the prepared pan. This AIN’T that easy.

HYZzjBpD2C1Q — Spreading melted chocolate chunks onto the top of the cooling brownie. FUN. (Thanks, Andrew, for the gif. app !)

8DKmS6kt81Tl — Final touch. Sprinkling MORE chopped walnuts onto this cookie. (Thanks again, Andrew ! Love the gif. app!)

And, finally, what it’s all about!

Four pieces for the family. The rest for friends and followers.

Some of these are destined for the Elementary PE Department. Are you friends with the PE department? Good time to start making friends. You can say you’re “looking for learning.””