I may have talked you in to making toasted coconut butter, but now you’re yelling, “Meg, what am I supposed to do with this stuff anyway?!” Besides eating it straight from the jar, which I find myself doing often, toasted coconut butter is lovely melted and stirred into oatmeal (with some chopped, dried mango sprinkled on top); made into a PB&TCB; melted, swirled into yogurt, and poured on top of pancakes; or added to a coconut based curry to deepen the flavor. But my favorite way to eat toasted coconut butter is in bon-bon form.

coconut banana bon bons

gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, but oh so good

ingredients:

• 1 or 2 bananas
• 1/2 cup or so toasted coconut butter
• 1/4 cup toasted coconut (optional)

directions:

1. melt the toasted coconut butter in the microwave at half power (or if you don’t have a microwave, in a double boiler) 
2. slice the bananas into thick 1 to 2 inch pieces
3. roll the bananas in the melted coconut butter and place on a cooling rack to let the excess drip off. 
4. for an extra thick coating of coconut butter, wait until the first coat is hardened (or pop in the freezer for a few minutes to speed up the process) then dip again
5. before the coconut has set up, roll the edges in toasted coconut
6. eat immediately!

The kids are crazy for these! My youngest asks to make them almost everyday. Even though he is only 3, he probably could make them himself at this point!

Do tell me if you make them. I’d love to know what you think!

The spring rain in these parts has been turning to snow more often than not. And I’ve been trying to celebrate the good bits of winter before they are gone for good. Granted sometimes it’s done with gritted teeth, like when I’m putting on my coat and hat and scarf and mittens for the bajillionth time, but hot chocolate is still delicious even if it is April. Baking a batch of these nutty, jammy bars warms up the house, makes it smell delicious and they are just right with coffee.  All the good, cozy things about winter and they taste pretty damn good too.

I combined a few different recipes to make these bars–one called them breakfast another dessert, so feel free to eat them all day. The biggest change I made was to brown the butter before I added it to the rest of the ingredients. If you’ve never done this before you will soon find yourself searching out ways to add brown butter to everything. Seriously, it’s like butter only better. To make it, put the butter in a light colored pan (so you can see it brown) and wait, stirring now and then, until it melts, then stops spitting and sputtering and turns a lovely dark shade of brown–about the color of maple syrup. Then take it off the heat right away so your lovely butter doesn’t turn black.

You can have your kids mix up all the dry ingredients while you cook the butter, then pour the butter in, scraping all those good browned bits off the bottom of the pan and into the bowl.  Actually your kids could probably do most everything. It’s dead easy: press two thirds of the dough in a pan, slap some jam on top and crumble the rest of the dough on top. It’s the perfect recipe to play around with too. You could use apricot jam and a little cardamom, or grind up pecans instead of almond flour and maybe even find some peach jam. Whatever you have in your cupboard is going to make these delicious, so you don’t really have much of an excuse to not make them right now. Unless it’s summer where you are right now, in which case poo on you.

brown butter bars

• 1 1/4 cups oatmeal
• 1 cup almond flour (or whichever nut you’d like, ground up fine)
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tea salt
• zest of one orange
• 1 1/2 sticks butter, browned
• 1 cup jam

Combine all of the ingredients except the butter and jam in a large bowl. Brown the butter: cut butter in pieces and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the milk solids (the little bits at the bottom) turn a deep brown color.  Quickly take it off the heat and pour it into the dry ingredients, scraping the pan into the bowl. Mix. Press two thirds of the dough into an 8×8 pan lined with parchment paper. Spread the jam on top and crumble the rest of the dough over it. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until nicely browned. Cool and cut into squares.

This recipe can easily be doubled and baked in a 13×9 cake pan. It’s pretty much my go to “shit! I need to bring a snack for preschool tomorrow!” recipe.