Baking is one of my favourite hobbies, period. But, Christmas baking is even MORE fun! I already posted about our big bake-fest, but I decided to do a few other recipes just for fun. This one was a first for me. I googled 'Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bars' and came up with a whole realm of suggestions, but this is the one I singled out. I have to give bragger rights to top secret chef Todd Wilbur for his version of this creation.
Cake:
1 cup butter at room temp.
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cups diced, dried cranberries ( I chopped mine up fine in my mini food processor)
6 ounces (squares) of while chocolate, cut up
Frosting:
4 ounces (1/2 block) cream cheese softened
3 cups icing sugar
4 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup diced, dried cranberries
Drizzled Icing:
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
2 tsp vegetable shortening
Preheat oven to 350*F
To make cake: Beat butter and sugar together until smooth.
Add eggs, vanilla, ginger and salt, beat well.
Gradually mix in flour until smooth.
Mix 3/4 cup cranberries and chopped chocolate into batter by hand
Pour batter into greased 9x13" pan. Spread evenly across pan
Bake 35-40 minutes or until cake is light brown on edges
Let cool
Frosting: combine cream cheese, 3 cups powdered sugar, lemon juice and vanilla with electric mixer until smooth. Once cake is cooled, spread over top of cake.
Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup cranberries over the frosting.
Drizzle: whisk together 1/2 cup icing sugar, milk and shortening. Drizzle over the cranberries in sweeping motion. ( I used piping bag with small round tip)
Once the cake has set/cooled for several hours, slice once, lengthwise down the centre, then 3 more times width-wise. This makes 8 large squares. Then, I cut each of these squares into 3 finger length slices. You could also slice them the 'starbucks' way and cut each square diagonally creating 16 triangular slices.
Improv Log Cabin Block Tutorial
15 hours ago
and these are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the Starbucks version. I might have to make some
ReplyDeleteThanks for making these for us!! Soooo good! :)
ReplyDeletethat would save me so much money rather than starbucks! Thanks!
ReplyDelete