eclaire (what's in a) name?

mike and i are lucky enough to celebrate the christmas holiday with three different and fantastic sets of family: my mom, mike’s parents, and my dad. for the celebration at my mom’s this year, we decided to give edible presents to each other for various reasons, but the biggest of which is that we all love baked goods (it runs in the family, i guess). mike and i got a little overzealous about the project and selected not one, not two, not three, but yep, you guessed it, FOUR different kinds of cookies to give away. we chose to make: 1. krumkakes; 2. cocoa-coconut macaroons; 3. vegan strawberry pinwheels; and 4. cinnamon stars.

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several halloweens ago, a thoughtful friend (i think it was capnscurvy) clipped a recipe from the mercury news for black cat cookies. i made them for the halloween party we threw that year, and loved them. but as halloweens are a full year apart, i have to admit that i almost completely forgot about the recipe after the first go with it.

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earlier this month, the new york times posted an article about the hunt for perfection in chocolate chip cookies. this article created a stir in the food blog world as everyone scrambled to make the recipe outlined in the new york times, critique it, and offer their own commentary about the best chocolate chip cookie.

i was planning on doing the same for you, dear readers, but every time i went to make the recipe from the ny times, my hands uncontrollably reached for my recipe box to get ahold of the card with my personal favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe instead.

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as promised, i’m sharing the recipe for the delicious raspberry bars i made for the picnic last weekend. these bars came out of our favorite food magazine vegetarian times, and were absolutely amazing, combining some of my favorite foods: oats, cinnamon, and raspberries.  mmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about them!

i made a couple of changes to the veggie times recipe – the main change was using fresh raspberries and mushing them with a fork instead of using the raspberry jam that was called for in the original version.  i found the fresh raspberries gave the bars a delicious and full flavor, but were a little soggy from the extra water in fresh berries vs jam.

so, when i had the occasion to make the bars again this weekend for my sister-in-law’s house warming party (yes, i liked them enough to make twice in one week), i used raspberry jam.  the jam bars were a lot crispier (the top was especially crunchy, with the texture of granola rather than soft oatmeal cookie), but they had more of a hint-of-raspberry flavor than a full bodied, how-did-you-pack-this-much-raspberry-flavor-into-such-a-little-bar taste.  so, my dear readers, when you make this recipe you’ll have to decide: crispy and crunchy with raspberry aftertaste or soft cookie, packed with raspberry deliciousness.  good luck with the choice – i still can’t decide how i would make them the next time.

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