Magic Bars, Seven Layers Bars (thought I got only 5 from my pantry at the last minute), Easy Peasy Yummy Treats - call them what you make like!

These were the yummiest and easiest bars I have ever made and healthiest if I may state. I have been staring at the pics and salivating at pictures of bar on various websites but never got down to doing anything about it. My sweet tooth got the better of me last night but I had promised myself to eat healthy till I work off all the sinful food I had eaten and added to my waist during my seven day holiday!

Now all the bar recipes seemed to be pretty great about substitutions and coming up with your own variations - so here goes what I did at 3am.

Firstly, these are the easiest bars to make. The condensed milk binds them together - so they hardly need any butter - no added sugar and no mixing, whisking - nothing. This in my dictionary was = PERFECT!

I used oats as the base of my bars. 1.5 cup quick cooking oats mixed with 1/2 cup melted butter - pressed into a square dish over some butter paper. When I had that down, I spread some ready made almond and raisin muesli over it - about 1/2 cup. Then on top of that went 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 cup chopped walnuts. On top of that I poured a 400gram can of condensed milk and baked for 35 minutes at 180C. Mine were overly brown on the top - I am guessing because of miniature oven I have. Next time I will bake for 25 or 30 minutes only.

But these bars were finger licking delicious - my husband like them - they were packed with fibre and nuts - and I didn't feel that bad about being derailed off my "eat healthy routine"!!!

I looked at a lot of websites and I thank all of them for the pictures and inspiration but this recipe isn't a direct copy of any 1 of them....

Chewy Chocolate Chunk and Oat Cookies

Delhi and Gurgaon have been freezing this year and with friends and relatives being around on and off I have been too lazy and tied up to enter the kitchen. Nothing like snuggling into the blanket anytime the baby decides to nap :)! But one morning I got up and could literally smell the cookies I have been meaning to bake for over a month.

I have been trying to find an easy and healthy recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies (chewy so my 14 month old son can eat some too...) and have tested a few recipes that I found online courtesy Rachel Ray, All recipes and a couple of other sites and came up with mine which is a little variant from the others but delivers the goods!

This recipe uses the quick cooking Quaker Oats which are heart healthy and give many benefits. I have given up trying to give my husband Oats or porridge for breakfast. Breakfast in our house can range from eggs & sausages to paranthas or dosas - I try to keep it simple and healthy but we do end up indulging on the weekends.

Though this is not the healthiest way to incorporate oats into our diet - I thought we had to make a start somewhere and incorporate the goodness of oats into our lifestyle - http://www.quaker.co.uk/Benefits.aspx

This cookie is a winner with my family and there usually isn't much left when the aroma of oats, cinnamon, chocolate baking waft from the kitchen and I have to hide a box for these to survive over 3 days....

Here goes and do leave comments and updates on how these came out:

1 cup butter softened (about 225grms)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon powder (you can add more for flavour)
3 cups quick cooking quaker oats
1.5 cups all-purpose flour (wanted to use whole wheat but haven't tried it with this variation)
1.5 cups chocolate chunks made from cadbury chocolates (made about 1/4 inch big chunks but you can use any chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, raisins etc)
a couple of spoons of milk

I creamed the butter and sugar in the food processor but it didn't beat too well - so I added about 2 tsps of milk - do add more if required but very little at a time. I then added the eggs. I mixed all the dry ingredients and added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients (excluding the chocolate chunks).

I then made balls (slightly sticky dough) of the size of a table-tennis ball. I then add the chocolate chunks individually into the cookies and put them on a greased parchment. Flattened them slightly with the end of a wooden spoon and left them a little rounded towards the top . These cookies don't spread too much - so you can make the balls the size of the cookies you want.

I baked them for 13-15 mins at 165 degrees centigrade and then left them on the wire rack to cool. They were yummy and full of taste and I ate the ones that had extra chocolate chunks hidden in them.

I definitely got less than 2 dozen cookies with this recipe but didn't count how many I got....

Pictures too follow soon. And please do leave me some tips on getting the darned pictures right!