Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry (Pizza) Bars

House sitting this week and I have about 50 pounds of raspberries in the fridge all for me! Well not exactly 50 pounds, but there's a lot of those little suckers. I'd show you a picture of them... but i forgot.


Actually I forgot to take a lot of pictures, and the ones i did take... well lets just say that they could use some help... and by some I mean a lot. You'll see.


Alright well with all these raspberries I decided to try this fancy little recipe I found on tastykitchen.com, Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry Bars! So I began with finding the ingredients and I found, I didn't have oatmeal.
or brown sugar.
or sugar.
or whole milk.
or real cream cheese.
or raspberry jam.
or all-purpose flour.
or sweetened coconut flakes.
but i had raspberries!
so I improvised. Prepare yourself, it gets messy.

So first things first, get some coconut! Mine is unsweetened. Boo. 

And spread thin and evenly on an un-greased cookie sheet, I used foil because I'm terrified of stuff sticking to the cookie sheet. Don't judge. 

Place in oven and let it get toasty brown! Meanwhile...

Put some flour, sugar, and salt into a bowl. This is where my photography started to spiral downward and I started to improvise like crazy. For example I think I used wheat flour, not entirely sure, and the sugar was also of questionable origin.

 You have been warned.

I was then suppose to have cold butter to mix in, but that takes forever! So I nuked it for 10 seconds... 

And plopped it on in! Ya I know "plopped" is a gross word, but it fits the really gross way the butter is laying up in that mix. (Note: I did remove the paper on the butter before continuing)

Then I mashed it up.  I'm a real professional can't you tell?

Sacrebleu! 

Almost forgot about the coconut but I pulled it out in time! Smelled amazing. 

Back to the mix added some barley, and some weird oatmeal clusters that I found. Oatmeal clusters not pictured above.

Then got some wax paper, even though it called for parchment, bad move in retrospect. 

And stuffed that crust down! Placed in fridge and got to work on the fruity stuff.

So I took some jam, apple and grape, and put it on the stove. Oh and added honey, for some reason I thought yeah.... honey will make up for brown sugar in the crust. It's been one of those days.

Threw in some raspberries...

 And mashed 'em up!  At which point it occurred to me that they resembled sun dried tomato pasta sauce...

Then fake cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar and 1% milk (weak). At which point,

Autobots Assemble!

Jam mix poured on oatmeal crust and spread out

Then fake cream cheese mix poured on top, at which point I felt it really resembled a pizza. Sigh...

 Put that in the oven for 20 minutes... and

Presto! A pizza... I mean oatmeal bars!

It was a rough journey to say the least, for one not having a single ingredient, save for the raspberries. And two thanks to this little fellow...

 He decided it was time to climb up my leg every few minutes or so, when i wasn't looking, and was holding really hot pans. I'll blame him for the missing photos and the pizza bars.


So it ended up being not at all delicious. The wax paper held on to those puppies like you wouldn't believe, so instead of bars I ended up more with pieces and crumbles. Plus the barley was really weird and the overall flavor was more bland than sweet and fruity like I had hoped.  Next time, I will for sure follow the recipe... Or add a ridiculous amount of sugar. Again got the original recipe at http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/desserts/oatmeal-coconut-raspberry-bars/, but improvised quite a bit.  I think I'll take some time to work on my photos, then I'll be back with more cooking adventures!


Side note:  Made spaghetti squash afterwards, if you've ever cut one you already know, if not, it was tough, and by tough I mean I got this knife

 Stuck like so...

And had to pry it out. Full body work-out of the week.