Fantastic Fruit Bars: Improvisational Cookery

We can't end our week with Amazing Magical Jell-o Desserts without having at least one ★-rated recipe "for children with more cooking skills." The fine folk at General Foods seem to think that more cooking skills translates into better improvisational choices, so there's more freedom in this recipe than the others we've looked at.

This freedom might come in handy this weekend, if you're on the East Coast of the U.S., and stuck inside waiting out Hurricane Irene -- you can mix up flavors to suit your tastes and your pantry supplies. Of course, if you're still standing in line at the grocery store, you could ask the nice person behind you to watch your cart while you run to get the ingredients, and then you can plan a little more specifically.

★ Fantastic Fruit Bars

THESE GO IN:
1 cup graham cracker or vanilla wafer crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine
2 packages (3 oz. each) Jell-O brand orange, lemon or peach flavor gelatin*
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 cup chopped dried apricots or prunes or chopped mixed dried fruits*
1 teaspoon grated lemon or orange rind (optional)*

GET THESE READY:
1-cup dry measure
1-cup liquid measure
small saucepan
medium bowl
measuring spoons
9-inch square pan
small knife

HOW TO MAKE IT:

1. Combine crumbs and melted butter; sprinkle 1/2 cup ccrumb mixture over bottom of a 9-inch square pan.
2. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water.
3. Stir in corn syrup, fruit and rind. Chill until slightly thickened.
4. Pour into pan over crumbs; sprinkle with remaining crumbs. Chill until firm, about 3 hours.
5. Cut into bars; store in refrigerator. (Bars hold well at room temperature for several hours.) Makes 20 confections.

*Suggested combinations: Orange flavor gelatin with apricots and orange rind. Lemon flavor gelatin with prunes and lemon rind. Peach flavor gelatin with mixed fruit; omit rind.

They're not coddling kids here: they recommend prunes. Prunes! Instead of raisins! You could use raisins. Or sultanas. Or Craisins. Or...any other dried fruit. Dried blueberries with Berry Blue Jell-O -- why not! Okay, other than my firm belief that food is not nor should it be blue. Regardless, we have a lot more flavor options in the gelatin world these days than we did back in the 70s, so branch out. If the idea of finding a flavor on a cookie tray doesn't make you hurl, try it here.

If I were writing this recipe, I'd change the order of the HOW TO MAKE IT so that you'd do step 2, step 3, and then step 1 -- there's no need for you to make the crust before making the gelatin, and you're going to have some time to twiddle your thumbs as the gelatin thickens slightly. This thumb twiddling time is the perfect time to throw a sleeve of graham crackers in a heavy duty zip top bag and start bashing the crap out of it.

It is entirely acceptable to use pre-crushed, comes-in-a-box-as-crumbs graham cracker crumbs. It is easier to measure, as there's no guess work as to how many crackers you'd need to whack. (We're full service here: 14 graham crackers make a cup of crumbs. You're welcome.) I do have a box of said crumbs on my shelf, in case I get a hankering to make a seven layer cookie. No shame.

Stay safe, folks. It's going to be a heck of a weekend, weather-wise. We'll be back with a new cookbook tomorrow.

Potluck Pleasers: 7 Layer Cookie, and Grasshopper Pie

I was a child of the '70s, and I love me some potluck. So, today, we'll look at two recipes from the Cook Book Presented by The Fishwives of Charleston Oregon that I absolutely guarantee will be welcome at a potluck in your future.

7 Layer Cookie

1 stick McKay's margarine
1 c. graham cracker
1 c. coconut
1 pkg. chocolate chips
1 pkg. butterscotch chips
1 c. eagle brand milk
1 1/2 c. chopped nuts

In a cake pan melt the butter. Then sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs over the butter. Sprinkle each of the ingred. in succession over the proceeding one. Bake at 350 for 30 min. Cool and cut.

--Flora Ann Anderson

Is this the first bar recipe for Take One Cookbook...? If so, what a bar to kick us off! It's easy as sin to put together, and, good golly, but it's tasty. I love all the textures, the gooeyness, the crumblies, the chewy coconut. As for your pan, I'd say break out your trusty 9x13, but if you want to try it in a 9x9 or an 8x8, I won't tell you no. You'll just get thicker bars (and I think we all appreciate a good thick bar, no?).

I've mentioned before that I was a margarine girl for the first half of my life. So, it tickles me that Flora Ann calls for margarine in the ingredient list, but only refers to butter in the instructions. I'll admit it: I called margarine butter. And, though this goes against everything I've said before, I really think that margarine is the way to go for this recipe.

Maybe it's just my childhood taste buds taking over. Perhaps I'll do a cook-off, with one pan of margarine 7 Layers and one of butter. My childhood taste bud, having thoroughly commandeered this post, also dictate the next recipe choice:

Grasshopper Pie

1 1/4 c. choc. wafers, crushed
1/2 c. sugar
3 tbsp. McKay's marg., melted
1 1/2 tsp. gelatin, unflavored
6 tbsp. cold water
1 McKay's egg, sep., beaten
1 c. creme 'de menthe
1/2 c. creme 'de cocoa
1 2 1/8 oz. pkg. whipped topping mix

Heat oven to 450 F. Combine the wafers, margarine and sugar. Press the crumbs into the bottom and sides of a well-buttered 9 inch pie plate. Put in oven. Bake 2 to 3 min. Cool. Combine the gelatin and water in a small saucepan. Place over low heat. Stir until dissolved. Combine the other half of sugar and egg yolk in a mixing bowl. Add the dissolved gelatin, creme 'de menthe and creme 'de cocoa. Chill. Prepaer the whipped topping mix. Fold into the gelatin mixture. Pour into crust. Chill 3 to 4 hours. May be topped with additional whipped topping.

--Viola Nappier

Ooooh, the green and black and creamy and minty icebox pie! Grasshopper Pie and Impossible Pie were my two favorite non-holiday pies for a good long time. I'm not sure about the reasoning for the apostrophes before "de" in the liquors, but this pie has a cup and a half of liquor, so I'm not going to nitpick.

If you were pressed for time, or find yourself with a better stocked bar than pantry or baking aisle, you could use a pre-made chocolate crumb crust. These don't taste as good as homemade, but they are tidy, and they come in their own pie tin, which means you don't have to think about how to get your tin on your way from the potluck.