Honey Bun Bars

One of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received was this year — a cookbook from my mother. Not a store bought cookbook, but an originally blank book that her mother (my grandmother) gave her around the time when she was married. This is a collection of handwritten recipes along with magazine and newspaper cutouts going back over 60 years. There are even a couple of recipes from my sister and one from me (my Dutch Baby Pancakes) in the cookbook. 

Love, memories, and history — this is why the gift holds such great value for me. It’s something money can’t buy. Even better, the cookbook was a surprise. I originally asked my mom to bring it for Christmas so I could take photos of some of my favorites (for example, what I consider to be a gold-standard banana bread and loads of Christmas desserts.). Instead, as we leafed through the book, especially since she no longer enjoys cooking, she told me I could keep it.

Besides the old familiar favorites, one recipe in particular caught my attention, the Honey Bun Bars. Our neighbor in Italy gave us three different jars of honey from local beekeepers.  To thank him, I decided that the first recipe I would make from my mom’s cookbook would be the Honey Bun Bars as a gift in return. We can even see some of the apiaries from our window — talk about a zero-kilometer product! 

Process-wise, this is a strange recipe, the likes of which I’ve never seen before and I don’t recall my mother ever making. That said, they’re also truly delicious! What makes the recipe strange is that what looks like a custard filling in the photo is actually a choux pastry dough (Pâte à choux, also known as cream puff dough) with honey folded in it. We liked them, as did our neighbor and his family, so there you have it — history and honey in the form of a bar dessert. I don’t typically paste in a recipe from a magazine or newspaper, but given the theme of this post, I thought the overall vintage aspect and fonts would be fun. But first, a few changes that will make the bars even better and more “honey-forward.”

A few things to note about the recipe:

• I reduced the almond extract by half in the batter, and omitted it completely in the icing. Otherwise it would have overpowered the honey
• During baking, the batter will puff up, and will do so irregularly. Don’t be alarmed. Once out of the oven it will flatten back down
• The directions call for putting the pecans over the bars during the last 10 minutes of cooking. Too late! They won’t stick that way. It’s ok, do it anyway to get them nicely toasted. The icing you put on later will hold them in place

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