Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry Bars and Chocolate Anise Bark

Miranda and I keep our cookies in tupperware in one dedicated freezer, and we selectively trot them out for tea time. Freezing them means that we can have a good variety on hand without worrying about anything going stale.

But I kind of go through phases at work, when it comes to focusing my free-time baking energy. During the spring, I was all about bread. Mini English muffins, mini whole-grain bagels, challah, brioche, oat bran broom bread, onion rye--I was having a ball. But our cookie stockpile suffered as a result.

And with the family in house, the funeral, and both of our focuses elsewhere, we're down to the bare minimum with a few boxes of store-bought to bolster the inventory.

Time to get out the mixer!

Dr. S. was seriously anti-coconut, so I was never able to explore the many coconut recipes in my baking at work. But I'm making up for lost time, and here's another coconutty recipe: Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry Bars.

The head notes say these are very durable and so could easily be packed and shipped to your faraway loved ones (college students, one presumes) and I agree--the coconut is like a delicious weave that keeps the other components in place.

One thing I especially liked about this recipe is that half of the coconut is toasted, and I just love what that does to the flavor. Good stuff, people--give them a try.

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I've had my eye on Chocolate Anise Bark ever since I got the book, and I'm kind of amazed that it's taken me this long to get to it.

My mom and grandma used to make a cousin of this every Christmas with the chocolate left over from Peanut Butter Bon-Bons--they would throw in chopped nuts and dried fruit, and put spoonfuls of it on wax paper to harden, and they'd become part of the Christmas cookie offerings.

This recipe kicks it up a notch with the addition of ground anise. The fruit-nut combo is a great one (cherries, apricots, cashews) but lends itself to substitutions (as in: whatever you have kicking around). In my opinion, you can't go wrong when you're pairing dried fruit and nuts with chocolate. They all match.