Painting and Tea Bars

I am pleased to report from Beetle HQ that the kitchen floor has been painted! It is now a glorious sky blue, and neither Mum nor I can get over how much bigger and brighter everything looks. For me especially, I am INSANELY EXCITED to cook in a sky-blue-floored kitchen.

Of course what has to happen first is that all the furniture has to be moved back in. 

Of course what that means is that all the furniture that is normally in the kitchen is in the dining room. 

A dining room that was pretty full of furniture already. 

Now . . . I'm not sure how well thus far I've managed to convey my feelings on organisation. If I haven't, and you are unclear on them, allow me an analogy:

Organisation : Beetle's Sanity 

A Beating Heart : Sustained Life

Does that help? 

After a weekend spent climbing over chests of drawers, benches, vacuum cleaners, and (why not?) cast concrete dog statues, when nothing is where it should be and I can't do anything about it, this is kind of what I looked like at dinner last night. 

BUT, DEAR READER, TAKE HEART. Because what's the one guaranteed way to make yourself feel better about household overflow insanity? 

BUYING MORE STUFF, OBVIOUSLY. 

That's right! After the first coat on Friday, banned from the kitchen for the requisite paint-drying six hours, neither of us could think of a better use of our time than going to Target and buying things. Because when the house looks like a home-decor tornado hit it, what's a few more silverware racks? 

Exactly. 

For the most part we kept our heads. We did NOT get a pair of black glitter ceramic ravens. We did NOT get a wicker hamper large enough to hold a dead body. And we did NOT get matching union suits with foxes on them. 

Mind you, we DID get get polka dot long underwear, but, I mean . . . Hello. It's Target. The persuasive power of Target would put a North Korean interrogator to shame. 

And, probably, get him to buy a shower caddy. 

I did buy these though. Which. HAPPINESS. 

It's a good thing I made the latest Beetle Bakery item BEFORE the kitchen was rendered beautiful, bare, and totally unusable.

It's almost Halloween, and whilst I have a special Halloween treat for my Lovely Librarians planned, I wanted to give them something nice for the weekend. Something autumnal and spicy, something not chocolate, something portable, something vaguely healthy, and something that was more "afternoon tea" than "dessert." 

Also something that used up a portion of my truly apocalyptic-preparedness-level supply of dried fruit.

So. What do you get when you put together Currants, Dates, Apricots, and Crystallized Ginger? 

BEHOLD. 

HARVEST TEA BARS

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
• scant 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 heaping tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup currants
• 1 cup chopped dates
• 1 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1 cup chopped crystallized ginger

In a small bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, and set aside. In the bowl of a mixmaster beat the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until light and fluffy. 

Add the flour mixture a bit at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the currants, dates, apricots, and ginger one by one, giving it a really good each time. 

Pour the mixture into a shallow brownie-type pan and bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes until browned on top and starting to pull away from the edges, and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. 

The batter for this = WICKED DENSE

Wait to cool before cutting into squares.

Like so. 

BEETLE NOTES

I err on the side of non-sweet, as you all know. I put barely two cups of sugar in these and was worried that even that might be too much. Dried fruit adds a bit dose of sweetness, and (duh) crystallized ginger is ginger covered in sugar. I held my breath when Mum did the first taste, but they passed. She says they are not too sweet and if SHE doesn't think they are, then you're good to go. Just be careful if you really don't like sweet things, and maybe even cut it down a bit more.

Ginger covered in sugar, it is true. Delicious and true. 

These were what I had hoped they'd be. Packed to the rafters with dried fruit, chewy, spicy, not-to-sweet, and capable of keeping you going for several hours. Mum has had them for breakfast, lunch, AND dessert and confirmed that they work in each instance. They taste healthy without being "gluten-free-carob-xantham-gum-flax-explosion" healthy, which is what you look for in an afternoon pick me up. 

I'm calling them HARVEST TEA BARS because . . . autumnal harvest? afternoon tea? Yeah. It works. 

When I was making this batter, a small voice in my head said "how about a tea LOAF? hmm?" And I have to be honest with you, I was sorely tempted. I haven't made a tea loaf in what feels like eons, and the contents of this simply screamed MAKE ME INTO A TEA LOAF ALREADY. 

I mean, HELLO. I AM A TEA LOAF.

However. 

The ratio of flour to wet ingredients was already at the stage when, confirmed via a few hurriedly sent and replied-to texts, making the transformation from Bar to Loaf Slice was potentially problematic. "Too dense!" said BFF with her classic Yankee bluntness, and I had to agree. Going from 2-inch thick chewy bar to 6-inch thick non-chewy-moist-instead slice is more than a matter of a pan. If I was possessed of actual cooking skills, I could probably have done it. But sadly, I am not. A bar it was. 

One bestie (who shall remain nameless) was very helpful in her enthusiasm though if not necessarily in her culinary opinions. Her text of "GIVE ME THOSE NOW" followed by several more texts comprised solely of exclamation points was, nevertheless, appreciated. 

HOWEVER AGAIN. 

Tea Loaf has now been moved into the top 5 of "Beetle's To Be Made" list. Got the recipe and everything. 

It should be noted that I cut these up for the Lovely Librarians with the baking dish balanced on the back of an armchair using an antique serving fork, and placed them on parchment paper that was resting on the Oxford English Dictionary (Q-Z). I then ran out the side door around the house to the OTHER side door, moved a chair, opened the "Miscellaneous Cooking Equipment" cupboard, found a large pie tin, ran back around the house in reverse, loaded them into the pie tin, spent 10 minutes trying to find the tinfoil, FOUND the tinfoil (upstairs foyer, in use to wrap paintbrushes), and wrapped them up nice and snugly with a Beetle label and many x's and o's. 

For you, my LL's. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW MUCH I CARE.