New cake porn

Friday afternoon is one of my favourite times. The kids get sweets on the way home from school, and unlimited TV until tea time which leaves me free to fiddle about in the kitchen. The main problem is that I can get too carried away and then suddenly realise that the Husband’s coming through the door, I have flour in my hair and melted chocolate/cake mix smeared over my face, and all there is for tea is some sweet treat that hasn’t made it out of the oven yet.

Yesterday, I embarked on what is clearly going to be a highly calorific love affair with Baked in America, my new cake porn. I have been considering my first move since I received it as an early birthday present last weekend. In the end, oatmeal crumble bars won out, being that it was the recipe that would require the least substitution of ingredients I didn’t have, vis macadamias, which I bought a few weeks ago for an as yet untried Dan Lepard cookie – I’m steering clear since an unfortunate episode with the passion fruit melting moments -  instead of pecans, chopped dark choc instead of ‘semi-sweet’ dark choc chips, and only minor modifications to my ‘pan’ to ensure that it was the optimum size (fold up the greaseproof lining paper and wedge in some old tin foil down the side to reduce the size – good job I’d slacked off taking the tin foil to the recycling).
It turns out like a kind of deconstructed millionaire’s shortbread with nuts, you make a cheesecake type base using melted butter, oats, sugar to line the pan and bake, then top first with chopped nuts and the choc chips, followed by a tin of caramel/dulce de leche which has been mixed with some plain flour. Bake again. It is totally lush. I had to cut it into smaller squares than the book suggests because it’s just too rich for the kids, but the advantage of that is there’s more pieces. It’s a good job I baked it on a Friday, because there’s a fighting chance there won’t be too much left by Monday, sitting in the tin, tempting me from on top of the dresser. “Eat me, eat me” it will whisper. “I’ll taste sooooo gooood with that coffee”. It’s just too much to bear.