For April 16

Apricot-Cherry Bars, from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Roasted Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies, from BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher

That's the plan, anyway.  Due to a couple of snafus, the cookie dough is in the refrigerator tonight, to be baked in the early a.m.  But this is a very nice cookie dough - there is a substantial amount of roasted peans in this dough, and the flavor is great.  This is my first recipe from BakeWise, which was generally listed as one of the best baking books of 2008.  Shirley Corriher has a background as a chemist, and has a very scientific approach to baking.  The book has a lot of recipes, but is more about the science behind baking than anything.  But she is also from Georgia, and that shines through in many of her recipes.  Here, the ample amount of roasted pecans - a large percentage of which are ground into a meal and are just basically part of the flour base for the cookie - is a dead give-away that a Southern baker is at work.  I hope they bake up as tasty as the batter promises!

The apricot cherry bars are a continuation on my dried fruit theme.  Here, the recipe was for apricot bars, but there was a variation for cherry bars.  I decided to just combine them, so we have apricot-cherry bars.  These are a bit crumbly - unlike last week's recipe, which used something close to a pate sucree base, these are much more crumbly.  But the filling is nice.  If I had a lemon at hand, I think I would have added a bit of lemon zest at the end to give it a little treble note, the dried fruit puree needs a little acid to be set off against, but I didn't so I didn't, and we'll all survive.  Anyway, yum.

Next week, the Center is closed for spring recess, so no planned cookies.