Repeat Prototype 1, but substitute whipped lowfat cottage
cheese for the lowfat cream cheese. And this time, thicken up! Use a
full recipe (instead of half), and put it all in a 9" x 9" pan.
The bars looked (and tasted) great in their
thicker form, but there were still some disintegration problems,
likely due to the timing of my cutting these bars after
refrigeration. All this painstaking preparation, off to a late
start, was getting well into the wee hours of the morning, and I
wanted to get to bed. So I finally did so shortly after putting
the finished recipe in the refrigerator for a firm chill.
Therefore I did not get around to cutting up the bars until at
least four or five (too many) hours afterward. Applying some
quick oven heat helped a little.
All this happened on a very eventful weekend, so my schedule was
a bit crazy, but I wanted to make some Bran Buddies to bring to
a friend's house for a Shavuot celebration on the Sunday of that
weekend. Many people there liked the recipe.
A number of days later, I also presented these thicker bars to
Lesa and Steve, who enjoyed these as well as the earlier
prototype (Steve was particularly enthusiastic about these
chocolate-only bars).