I was innocently browsing Facebook the other day when a post from Smitten Kitchen caught my eye. This is nothing new, posts from this New York based cooking goddess often tempt me.

This time it was a post about raspberry breakfast bars.  They looked completely sensational, a double crust of oats, with a gooey looking raspberry centre.  I immediately clicked over to take a look at the recipe, but I have to say that there seemed to be something missing.  See, the amazing photographs looked as if the bottom crust of the cookie had a layer of dark chocolate on it. I was a bit disappointed to see that this was not true.

However, I still wanted to make them, and adding the layer of chocolate that I had always believed was present to the version I made was going to be pretty simple.  They are just finishing their time in the oven now, and smell unbelievably good.  I didn’t make them all raspberry  due to a supplies failure in my freezer, so I had to do half blueberry half raspberry instead. I figured: its pretty hard to go wrong with ingredients like these:

In addition, I only made half the recipe below. I am now at the very forefront of a incurable baking addiction, and I am frankly a little bit worried that my colleagues at work are going to start  complaining about the amount of baking that’s coming through the door.  I know that this is a somewhat paranoid fear but at the rate I’m going, someone is going to get diagnosed with type II diabetes, and I don’t want to get the blame.  I’m gonna keep my Berry Chocolate Cookie Bars for myself.  I’m kind of hoping they might store nicely in the freezer, for snack attack moments.

By the way, I mentioned cholesterol in my last post. Apparently mine is not great ( I blame Cupcake a Day May), so I made these with Proactiv, a cholesterol lowering “margarine” rather than butter. They are still very tasty.

Berry Chocolate Cookie Bars

Makes 12

Cookie crust

ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 sugar
1 1/4 cups jumbo rolled oats
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
170g butter, cubed

65g good quality dark chocolate, finely chopped

mixing

Line a 20×25 cm pan (3 cm deep or more) with bake paper

Process all ingredients except the chocolate until the mixture resembles crumbs. Press all but 1 3/4 cups of the mixture firmly and evenly into the prepared pan. Set the reserved mixture aside for the topping.

Bake the cookie crust at 175 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven, and immediately sprinkle the chopped chocolate over the hot crust. Let the chocolate melt a little, then spread over any gaps. Make the berry filling.

Berry filling

ingredients

450g fresh or frozen berries, thawed (I used raspberries and blueberries, strawberries and boysenberries is also great)
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp lemon juice

mixing

Toss all the ingredients together in a bowl until well combined. Spread over the chocolate covered cookie crust. Sprinkle the reserved cookie crumb evenly over the berries.

Return the cookie bars to the oven for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the edges of the filling are bubbling. Let the cookie bars cool then cut into pieces.

Enjoy!xxx