These dessert bars are perfect to make as an after-dinner treat! You can also bring these to a holiday party since they make a delicious party snack.
There are a lot of recipes on your site for making bars. Which recipes are your favorites?
The whole ‘bar’ overload is probably more of a coincidence, but I do notice that I tend to gravitate towards recipes that are fairly simple and quick to bake. Most of the time I’m baking at night after work and I just don’t have the hours to spend letting dough rise, etc. That said, who doesn’t love a decadent bar or soft, chewy cookie? Right?! Out of the recipes I have on LSM right now, the Pumpkin Bars with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting would have to be one of my tops for two reasons: I got the recipe from my cousin [who also loves baking] and the bars are just out-of-this-world moist [you’ll leave prints in the bars, they’re that moist!] and second, this is one of the recipes I tweaked ever so slightly to make my own. The original recipe just had a regular cream cheese frosting but I added the maple flavoring. And I must say, they’re pretty dang good.
Pumpkin Bars
You’ve also created amazing dessert recipes! What recipes do you recommend for moms?
It’s hard for me justify complaining about not having enough time, because you moms are simply amazing. I honestly don’t know how people juggle careers, children, family, and making sure to save some time for yourself. All moms out there deserve a couple Mother’s Days a year, I would say! But as I mentioned, I’m usually looking for quick recipes that don’t require loads of clean up, since I’m usually packing in a baking sesh during the week at night. So some of the recipes I’d recommend to the busy moms out there who still want to ‘wow’ their audience would be: 7-Layer Magic Bars [a true classic that takes one bowl!], Banana Bread Bars with Brown Butter Frosting [this is my most popular LSM recipe], Monster Cookie Bars [the cookie base is classic peanut butter and you can sub in as many goodies as you like!], French Toast Casserole [who doesn’t love an overnight dish you can throw in the oven in the morning and have a truly superb breakfast treat for everyone], Chewy Molasses Sandwich Cookies [my mom gave this me this recipe and I’ve found both adults and kids alike devour this treat!], or Apple Cinnamon Truffles [these have been a HUGE hit and moms can enjoy family time by having the kiddos help dip the truffles in chocolate]. I know that’s a number of things but I want to give you options!
Banana Bread Bars
Monster Cookie Bars
Where do you find most of your recipes? What do you think are the best sources?
I personally find a lot of the recipes I try out through blogs I follow. There are some amazingly talented bloggers and photographers out there that I’ve stumbled upon, so their mouthwatering recipes are hard to pass up. When I do come across recipes I’d like to try, I always pin them and typically circle back to them later. Some of my favorite blogs include Bake or Break, The Baker Chick, Sugar Plum, and The Girl Who Ate Everything. But I follow a lot of blogs so if you’d like any more recommendations, feel free to send me a shout out!
What are some of your absolute favorite foods?
That’s easy! I wouldn’t exactly say I have a specific favorite food, but anything Mexican is my weakness. I could eat it every day for every meal, no joking here! My parents always joked that I was half Asian [which I really am] and half Mexican, because I event went as far as to request tacos for every single one of my birthday meals. I’m sure my mom recalls. But anywho, burritos, quesadillas, sopapillas, you name it, I love it!
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Meet the blogger:
Oh man, where to begin?! First, I’m rather boring! I pretty much love the basics of life: my fiancé, our three pups, my family, shopping, baking, and sports. Okay, I realize those aren’t the basics of everyone’s life but work with me.
My fiancé and I recently moved to Chicago, IL, both of us working in the corporate finance arena. Exciting conversations, huh? But we live in the good ol’ Midwest with our three puppies, which are who we absolutely love spending our free time with. They’re our babies. I’m originally from Minnesota, so my parents and brother still live there and I try to make visits back home as often as I can. My family is one of the most important things in my life and I will never let them forget that!
My passion for baking didn’t come about until later in life, my sophomore year in college to be exact. I couldn’t tell you what changed but one day I suddenly felt an urge to make whoopie pies [random choice!] and the rest is history. I haven’t stopped baking since. I will say that the baking bug has been in my family though, my lovely mother used to bake quite a bit [chocolate chip cookies are my dad’s favorite] and she very obviously passed along her passion to me. Thanks, mama! But along the way, I started getting requests from my relatives and friends for recipes that they had seen me make [I posted a picture of every experiment on Facebook] and after a while, typing out recipes over and over just got old. Then one day, a random acquaintance suggested I start a blog to keep track of the recipes I tried out and manage all of the notes I was writing down about each one. After a little blog research and some brainstorming, Life’s Simple Measures [LSM] was born!
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