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Chocolate Cherry HiFi Buddy Bars—Prototype 1:
Given that chocolate and cherry are a popular Valentine's Day combination,
let's make some HiFi Buddies for this romantic holiday. This particular
recipe uses cherry butter, a pasty-textured cherry spread available (at
least as of this batch's production) at Whole Foods Market.
This recipe is based mainly on Prototype 8 of the chocolate peanut butter
bars. However, the cherry butter directly replaces the peanut butter. Due to
exchanging this peanut butter for a sweeter ingredient, the sugar is omitted
from the filling as well. The details are as follows:
Crust:
6 oz. melted, semi-sweet chocolate
2 oz. cherry butter (combine quickly with the chocolate above while it is
still melted, and blend in the next two ingredients shortly afterward)
3/4 cup sugar
16 oz. whipped lowfat cottage cheese
1 tbsp. skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla (next to last ingredient here!)
8.8 oz. Bran Buds, ground up
Filling:
6 oz. melted, white chocolate
2 oz. cherry butter
1 teaspoon vanilla (last ingredient here!)
Press the crust mixture into a 9" x 9" wax-paper-lined pan. Firm
it up in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or freezer for 10 minutes.
Remove the pan from whatever cooler was used, and add the cherry filling on
top of the crust layer. Tip: if the filling is stiff, microwave it a little
to soften, before it gets put on the crust (this is better than the broiler
heat approach).
Place the pan in the refrigerator. Chill until the top filling is almost
completely firm, about 60 to 90 minutes, then cut into bars. Return these to
the refrigerator, and chill until fully firm.
Chocolate Cherry HiFi Buddy Bars—Prototype 2:
No need to add more cherry! No need to lower it either. But the quest was on
for the filling to have a more reddish appearance. Repeat Prototype 1, but
shift 1 ounce of the cherry butter from the crust to the filling (which
would furthermore have more of a distinct cherry taste). This means 1 ounce
of cherry butter for the crust, and 3 ounces of it for the filling.
Another change was to defer the crust's sugar until after the cottage
cheese. In Prototype 1, there was a lumpiness problem in fully blending the
semi-sweet chocolate mixture with the cottage cheese. This was likely caused
by the cold cottage cheese being combined long after the chocolate was
melted. What happened was that the chocolate mixture had an extended
chance to cool back down, thanks in part to mixing the sugar into it before
bringing on the cottage cheese. The mixing bowl used was metal, so microwave
usage was not a suitable choice. A cautious use of a conventional oven would
reheat the contents enough to produce a desired thorough blend. As for
Prototype 2, a further step was to somehow preheat the metal bowl. One way
of doing this was by heating it in an oven. Another helpful approach
involved filling a sink with some hot water and placing the bowl of mixture
there and blending the contents without getting any of the sink's water into
the bowl.
Fast forward to the point after the top filling is spread over the crust!
Place the completed pan in the refrigerator, and chill until the top filling
is almost completely firm. But this time allow about 2 1/2 to 3 hours,
due to a softer filling (because of it having more of the soft cherry
butter), then cut into bars. Return these to the refrigerator, and chill
until fully firm.
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