The party food landscape has become increasingly homogeneous, with its ubiquitous bag of Doritos rather than homemade fudge or stuffed mushrooms. Columnist Erin Nyren would like to bring back the house parties of yore, in which everyone cooked or baked something to share.
Sometimes when baking, things slip through the cracks. It can be accidentally taking something out of the oven early or leaving it in too long or, as was in my case this week, forgetting an ingredient.
I had just eased my apple crisp bars into the oven to bake and grabbed the bag of flour to put back in the pantry. As I turned from the counter, the unopened pint of half-and-half sitting on the counter caught my eye. I snatched it and held it to eye level as the truth sunk in: I had forgotten to add it into the caramel drizzle on the stovetop.
I blame this mishap on my cluttered counter, since the bags of flour and brown sugar had hidden the half-and-half from my view.
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In the end, it didn’t make too much of a difference. Perhaps the caramel drizzle was thicker than it should’ve been without the liquid – though I’m not sure what difference the half-and-half would’ve made – but the bars tasted like heaven anyway.
I wanted to follow a more difficult recipe this week instead of a straightforward one. The apple crisp bars sounded tasty and I already had most of the ingredients in my pantry. What’s nice about baking as opposed to cooking is if you keep most pantry basics, like flour, sugar and baking soda stocked, often only one or two other things are needed from the store. This week it was apples.
Whenever I cook with apples, I always want the most flavorful ones. I bought Fuji apples since the sign at Trader Joe’s said they’re the sweetest.
A mandoline slicer truly makes this recipe much easier. My mandoline slicer is a small rectangular plastic box with four removable tops, each containing a different type of blade. All I do is slide whatever needs slicing across the blade and voila – dozens of extremely thin apple slices appear. Without a mandolin slicer, using a knife is just as feasible; it simply takes longer and may result in thicker slices.
Once I had started slicing the apples and saw exactly how many slices I was going to get out of them, I became a bit skeptical that I would need them all. I was also surprised that the recipe had called for so many but figured I’d slice them all anyway. I ended up with about two handfuls of extra apple slices. I’m guessing my interpretation of a small apple is not the same as the recipe author’s interpretation, so keep that in mind when choosing apples.
I realized an electric beater is required to make the crust, which I didn’t have at the time. I ran to Target, which had a Hamilton Beach mixer luckily on sale for $17.99. Without an electric mixer, whisking the brown sugar and butter is always an option, it just takes much longer to reach the desired consistency. Under $20 is a good price to pay for an electric beater, which tends to last for a while.
The most difficult part of this recipe is making the caramel drizzle that goes on top of the layered crust and apples.
Obviously, I had a hard time with it since I completely forgot to add one of the ingredients, but ignoring that, getting the butter and brown sugar to completely combine was difficult. Some melted butter just hung out in a layer on top of the caramel and would not incorporate with the sugar. I also had to keep my heat on very, very low so the butter wouldn’t brown. A good rule of thumb: when in doubt, always keep the heat on as low as possible. Better to take an extra couple of minutes to cook something than burn it.
My bars wound up with a rather thin crust on the bottom. I used the amount of crust that the recipe called for, but when I spread it over my baking sheet, it didn’t produce as thick of a crust as I would’ve liked. I suspect my baking sheet was larger than needed, so use a smaller baking sheet so the same amount of crust produces a thicker layer or make more crust than the recipe specifies.
The bars came out fantastically. I gave away about a third of them and shared the rest with my roommates. Like the recipe says, they’re addicting!
– Erin Nyren
What’s the best food you’ve ever eaten at a party? Email Nyren at enyren@media.ucla.edu.