Holy Candy Cookie Bars!

Yesterday I made one of the most chocolaty, most fattening recipes I have ever made. The recipe just sounded so good and had been bookmarked for months so I decided to give in and make it for a friend's birthday. What was this recipe? Basically a candy bar in a cookie bar form, otherwise known as Crunchy Caramel Reeses Cookie Bars from Picky Palate.

Ingredients:
1 roll refrigerated sugar cookie dough
1 cup crushed pretzels
3 cups mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups
10 Kraft caramels
1 tbsp fat-free milk
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
Unwrap peanut butter cups and caramels, set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8x8 baking dish with foil (I used a disposable foil baking dish so skipped this part) and spray with cooking spray. Cut cookie dough roll in half and press half into bottom of baking dish. Layer with pretzels. Cut PB cups in half and layer over pretzels. Melt caramels and milk in a microwave safe bowl until melted, about 1-2 minutes in microwave. Pour caramel over PB cups.
Crumble (or spread) remaining cookie dough evenly over top the PB cups. Bake for approximately 22 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through. Let cool completely. Melt chocolate chips in microwave until smooth, drizzle over top of bars.

The original recipe said it made 9 bars, but I cut this into 12 and that still ends up being about 8 pts/bar. Obviously though, this isn't a WW friendly dessert, but that's ok because it was a huge success! My friend really liked it as did the other dozen of guys sitting around watching football. It was quite cliche, me walking in with baked goods at a football watch party, but it was a winner!

Shortly after this they were completely gone!

My Very First Kugel

A couple of posts away my lovely sister, Franny, posted her kugel recipe from Yom Kippur break-fast. This recipe is courtesy of the Food Network. I contemplated making my sister's recipe, since that would be a new recipe for ME to make, but then I couldn't really blog about it. So I found this recipe, which is extremely similar.

One of my book club friends had noodle kugel for the first time a couple months ago and absolutely loved it! So for this month's book club I said I would bring kugel, which I did last night.

Ingredients:
1/2 pounds (12 oz. bag) wide egg noodles
1/2 stick butter, melted
1 pound cottage cheese (I used low-fat)
2 cups sour cream (again reduced fat)
1/2 cup sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:
Boil the noodles in salted water for about 4 minutes. Strain and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine noodles with the remaining ingredients and pour into a greased 9x13 inch baking dish.
Bake at 375 degrees F until custard is set and top is golden brown, about 30-45 minutes. I baked mine I think for about 38 minutes.

I actually made everything the day before and baked it the day of. Before I baked I sprinkled the top with some cinnamon and sugar. The end result? Success! For many people at book club it was their very first noodle kugel and they were all impressed. A bunch them were surprised it was a sweet dish, they had no idea.


As someone who has grown up with a lot of noodle kugel I would say this was good, not great. Maybe I should've baked it for longer or maybe it was just too traditional. You can't really go wrong with noodle kugel so I definitely enjoyed it, but next time maybe I'll stick with Franny's recipe.