Chocolate Walnut Bars | Baking Partners #23

Aah its good to be back. I loved the break of almost two months and now its back to grind. And with the chocolate walnut cookie bars its a perfect comeback post. This month the Baking Partners group chose bar cookies as the theme and out of the three recipes suggested by Suja of Kitchen corner I went with Chocolate Walnut Bars from Faye Levy's Chocolate Sensations. The recipe is pretty easy and I halved it and as usual replaced the egg yolks with flax eggs.

Ingredients:

Walnut CookieDough:

Walnuts: 1/2 cup

Egg yolks: 1.5 ~ 2  OR Flax Eggs : 2 tbsp flax seeds with 4 tbsp of water

Sugar: 1/4 cup

Salt : 1/8 tsp

Vanilla; 1 tsp

Lemon zest: 1 tsp  or Lemon Juice: 1-2 tbsp

Chilled cubed butter: 100 gms or 1/2 cup or 8 tbsp

All Purpose Flour : 14 tbsp + additional 2 tbsp

Chocolate Jam Filling:

Dark/ semi sweet chocolate: chopped up 6 tbsp

Raspberry/ choice of preserves/ jam : 4 tbsp + more if needed

Crumble top:

Sugar: 1 tbsp

All Purpose Flour: 2 tbsp

Walnuts: 2 tbsp

Walnut cookie dough from above : 2-4 tbsp 

Preparation:

Finely process the nuts and set aside. 

For egg yolks , i have used flax egg - 2tbsp flax powdered with 4 tbsp water .Make the flax egg in the processor/ small mixer and to this add sugar, salt, chilled cubed butter, lemon zest/juice and vanilla and process together. Add the nuts and flour and process till you get a mass. 

Turn the mass onto plastic wrap and bring together as a dough and chill it for an hour in the fridge.

For me I got a little sticky dough and added another 2 tbsp of flour ,wrapped it and chilled it overnight.

Next day before baking remove 2-4 tbsp of dough and chill it and spread with hands the remaining dough onto an appropriate baking dish.

Spread the jam on the dough and then sprinkle chocolate shavings/chunks atop it. 

Make the crumble top by using the remaining cookie dough along with the other ingredients. Sprinkle the crumble dough atop the chocolate 

Bake in a preheated oven at 350F/180 Cfor about 20-30 minutes or more until the top lightly browns and becomes firm.

Remove and let it cool for a bit. When lukewarm, cut the dish into bars and serve with tea  or as a dessert.

Yum bars. Mine turned out a little bit crumbly though. but still I could cut them into bars and enjoy them.

Lets see what others have baked this time for Baking Partners. Lets hop over to Swathi's post .