Lime Dulce de Leche Bars

I definitely always intended to make these as a winter dessert, but I ended up being off by one major holiday. After buying all of the ingredients around Christmas, but completely running out of time to make them, the cans of sweetened milk sitting in my cupboard kept reminding me that I wasn't going to be able to think of anything else to make with them. So I made them sort of for Valentine's Day last weekend, and they lasted all week, which was a nice.

At first glance they're not exactly a winter recipe; they're sort of tropical for this time of year. But I think that's why I like them. The citrus zest and the tropical-ness of the coconut kind of cut winter dreariness.

Eventually, I promise to work harder to move past posting lime/coconut/chocolate dessert recipes, but for now I think these confirmed my love of coconut-based desserts. Without the lime and chocolate they would be be way too sweet, but with those ingredients they're interesting. That said, I cut them pretty small because of how rich they are. Without any kind of crust, though, they're super easy to make and also keep really well in the refrigerator.

Lime Dulce de Leche Bars

Makes about 2 dozen small bars

2 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk
1/2 C light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 t salt
14 ounce bag sweetened flaked coconut
5 ounce bag sliced almonds
zest of 1 lime (about 1.5 T)
1 C dark chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Line a 11x17 baking sheet (with raised edges if possible) with parchment paper.
3. In large mixing bowl, stir to combine the sweetened condensed milk, corn syrup, vanilla, and salt.
4. Dump in the coconut, almonds, and lime zest. Stir.
5. Spread mixture out evenly onto baking sheet.
6. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown around edges.
7. Let cool so that bars harden; refrigerate any leftovers.

Cooking for life improvement

photo credit: TIME (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1628191_1626317_1631908,00.html)

I've been meaning to break my too-long blog hiatus for the last few weeks, and haven't been quite able to do it. I've had a little writer's block, I've been busy, and I actually haven't been cooking at all as much as usual. 

I miss it, though, which has led me to think about how I feel when I have the time to cook and actually think about what I'm cooking. Not unsurprisingly, I think cooking improves your life, but I think it goes way beyond any nutritional or environmentally-based reason.

So to take a giant step back, I came up with a list of reasons, totally separate from survival, for cooking, and investing in cooking.

• Mental exercise! Like traveling, cooking allows you to think about the diversity of options that exist in the world and contemplate how they're similar and different. Think about the difference between sushi and lasagna - they're different in every way. Even without leaving the same region of cooking, I think it's fascinating the types and range of dishes one place has come up with. To be honest, the idea for this blog post came to me when I was eating a meal such as the one pictured below in Thailand, trying something new, and thought, "it's crazy to me that this is a dish I've never even THOUGHT of making."

• Adventure in your daily routine. Very related to mental exercise is a sense of adventure in every-day life. Maybe you are like me and are kind of bad at appreciating daily routines and tend to find them repetitive too quickly; cooking can help with this. Cooking can be a routine that you come back to, but you can try new things all of the time.

• Pain-staking recipes put you in the moment. I read a Mark Bittman NY Times article the other week that made me think about this. It was about kaiseki, an elaborate style of Japanese cooking brought to Japan from China by Zen Buddhist monks, a highly formalized and pain-staking style of cooking. The article includes a recipe for a sauce that takes four to five hours, plus 36 hours of soaking time, to prepare. How it tastes is probably a part of why it's worth that much time into, but I also think that there's a serious effect of feeling like your life slows down and you can be in the moment when you put that much time into one thing and really focus on the process of it. Think about how endless (hopefully in a good way) five hours of your evening would feel if you spent them all working on one sauce.

Here's to trying new things in 2012 and to more cooking! Back soon with more recipes.