Time to Eat Your Greens

Not gonna lie, y'all...Saint Patrick's Day totally snuck up on me this year. Usually I've already baked and digested so much green food by this time in March I feel honorarily Irish. I was ill-prepared for how short February was, and I totally fell off my game because of it. Then I was a little occupied with all things purple last week for bonafide reasons, and due to my inherited preference for said color, I kind of forgot things were supposed to be turning green. I'll take this moment to also blame Florida (it's what I do) because the entire region has been green since January, so it threw off my groove. Beware the groove. I wanted to make it up to my extremely (proven by 23andMe) Irish husband, so I came up with a dessert we actually hadn't eaten yet for Saint Patrick's Day...which between my 8,000 Guinness, Baileys, and Shamrock Shake variations was no small task. I wonder if kissing the Blarney Stone would provide me with the gift of new dessert ideas instead of the gift of the gab, which, let's face it, I am totally already shamrocking. Running quickly away from that terrible joke, let me debut my first of two 2018 Saint Patrick's Day dessert entries: pistachio sugar cookie bars with cream cheese frosting!

May you live as long as you want and never without dessert -An extremely (proven by 23andMe) French take on an Irish proverb by yours truly.

Oh yes, they're green. They're so green, they make most green vegetables embarrassed to be the same color. While I did lighten these up to make them healthier, I can promise you it's not through zucchini or kale trickery. As if enchanted by the magical properties of a leprechaun (god, I'm so sorry, but I'm filled to the brim with terrible Saint Patrick's Day puns this close to the holiday with no other outlet), a 9x13 pan of these will only set you back 219 calories for one ample-sized bar (15 servings total). I must admit the magical properties that made this possible were Swerve's two varieties of sugar replacement. And butter. All of the butter.

And a significant amount of pudding.

I found this recipe and adapted it to play around with Swerve's granular variety after testing out the confectioner's variety last week. To make these bars, I used:

• 3/4 cup butter at room temp (to reduce calories even more, replace with unsweetened applesauce)
• 3- 1 oz. boxes of Jell-o sugar free pistachio pudding mix (mix only)
• 1/2 cup Swerve granular sugar replacement
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• Optional (but festive!): green gel dye

Preheat your oven to 350 and line a 9x13 tray with Parchment and spray with cooking spray. In a stand mixer, blend your butter and Swerve together until fluffy (3 minutes). Add in each box of pudding mix, one at a time, mixing well before each addition. Add in your eggs, extracts, a few drops of gel dye, and blend well. In a small bowl, blend the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Dump half the mix into the wet ingredients and blend. Add the rest of the dry mix until just incorporated. The dough will be stiff since this is a cookie batter.

And green. Did I mention it would be green?

Turn the dough out into your prepared pan and use your hands to press out evenly. I finished up by rolling a glass around the pan a few times to smooth things out. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. I was in the middle of doing other things (read: not paying attention) and let these bake for a full 20. They were definitely overcooked in my opinion. I prefer a soft cookie, and these were rather firm. Nothing a little microwave action couldn't fix (more on that later), but these bars should definitely be soft, so err on the side of less time. I'd say no more than 18 minutes max if you like a firmer cookie bar. My oven is possessed by an evil spirit that lies about what temperature the oven really is, so things cook much faster than they might in your normal, non-demonic oven. Do the Winchester brothers make house calls for oven exorcisms?

A little less green and "Angry Hulk" in appearance after baking.

Once finished baking, let your cookie bar cool completely in the pan on top of a cooling rack before even thinking about frosting. Did you know that 99% of cooking fails could be prevented if people allowed their baked goods to cool before frosting? That legitimate fact that I totally did not just make up should convince you it's worth the wait to frost these babies.

Ahh yes, Philadelphia, city of brotherly love and cream cheese.

To make your frosting, gather up:

• 4 oz. 1/3 less fat cream cheese
• 1/4 cup room temp butter
• 2 1/2 cups Swerve confectioner's sugar replacement
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 2 TBS skim milk
• Optional, but again, fessssstiiiivvveeeee: green sprinkles

  Start by blending the cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add in half the Swerve, the extracts, and one tablespoon of skim milk. Blend well, then add in the remaining Swerve and last tablespoon of skim milk. Frosting will be thick, but still easy to spread.

Like buttah.

 You can call it a day here if you're thinking there's too much green on these bars already, but at this point, just take it the extra mile and garnish with pretty green sprinkles:

It could be none more green.

 Be sure to add the sprinkles quickly after you've frosted, before things start to set. Since these have cream cheese in them, I made them live in the fridge to help firm up the frosting before cutting into 15 squares.

Square...ish.

 This. Frosting. Dear sweet Lucky Charms this frosting is yummy. I talked last blog about the "cooling" York Peppermint Patty feeling after eating frosting with Swerve in it. I since read their blog, tried a few things, and we've greatly reduced this sensation. I want my cookie bars warm, so I heat them in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften the cookie base--in doing so, heating up the bars cuts the cooling sensation down significantly. Since I wanted to use butter and not applesauce for the bars, I opted not to use half Swerve/half powdered sugar for calorie count. But in the future, I think this would almost completely erase that sensation. Again, it doesn't taste bad or weird, it's just not something you're expecting when you take a bite of a non-mint dessert.

Look at that frosting-to-bar ratio. Mmmm.

The pistachio cookie flavor mixed with the cream cheese frosting is savory meeting sweet in all the right ways. Warmed up, these bars are positively irresistible. You could probably keep these covered at room temp to keep the cookie bar soft, but I think everything is trying to kill me, so I opt to keep a cream cheese frosting in the fridge. My idea of living dangerously is using milk one day past its expiration date. What I lack in edginess, I make up for in baking and sass. My Irish husband is super pleased with these bars, and that's what matters most. I won't be drinking any green beer Saturday because I'll be too busy double-fisting these pistachio cookie bars. There's simply no room for beer when I'm busy turning the contents of my stomach green with delicious, pistachio-laden sweets. I can't drink like the Irish, but I will eat most green things (except for you, peas--tiny little orbs of nastiness). I promise to bring a booze-filled, totally not in any way green dessert to you next week. Enjoy your Saint Patrick's Day! 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

I mean, I've definitely made greener desserts.