Fruit and Chocolate Dream Bars

These bars are basically a crust topped with strawberry (or raspberry) jam, a crumbly pecan topping, and then milk chocolate chips to finish.

Well, this recipe was honestly kind of frustrating for me... It's slightly more difficult in that you have to use a pastry blender to blend two different flour and butter mixes by hand, but that wasn't the really frustrating part. What I really disliked was how the bars turned out when I cut them. You see, you use a whole bag of milk chocolate chips on top of the bars, and after baking the chocolate is a little melty. So when I went to cut them with a metal spatula, the chocolate chips stuck to the spatula. >_< I tried to get some of the sticky mess back on to the bars where they belonged, but a lot of the chocolate ended up getting trashed... =/ I'm thinking there's a lesson to be learned here. When there's whole chocolate chips on top of a bar cookie, it might be best to refrigerate before cutting, and also use a small, thin knife - something that the melty chips won't cling to. Or, I was also thinking it might be advantageous to simply bake the bars without the chips on top, and simply melt and spread the chocolate after baking and cooling.

Anyway, that's my rant about this recipe... The bars didn't turn out pretty, and quite a bit of chocolate was sady wasted. =( I suppose I'll get over it. =P

As far as taste, they're actually pretty good, even though I don't like pecans and I'm only so-so when it comes to jam or jelly. The crust turned out pretty crisp, the jam adds tartness, and the pecan topping and milk chocolate chips add sweetness. I'd give this a solid 3 1/2 out of 5, despite the frustration I had with making it.

Cheers! Then next two recipes involve peanuts and chocolate.

~Jesia <3