Everyone raves about Peppermint Cream Cheese Bars

By Kari Hulac
STAFF WRITER

A perk of being a judge at our annual Holiday Cookie and Candy contest isn’t necessarily getting to taste all of the winning entries. It’s sampling dozens of other goodies, many of which could have been contenders.

But as you might have read in our Dec. 13 Food section, where we announced the winners, narrowing down the field from 40 entries to a few finalists isn’t easy. The harsh reality is that sometimes the best man — er, cookie — doesn’t always receive its just desserts.

I felt that way about Elsa Bouman’s Peppermint Cream Cheese Bars, and I lobbied unsuccessfully on their sweet behalf to name them finalists.

The bars — full of crushed candy canes in a cream cheese filling between two layers of sugary crust — are a perfect example of what makes a dessert worthy of your holiday table.

The candy cane, which Bouman uses liberally in her recipe, is such a classic seasonal treat. Plus, with a touch of pink in the filling and a snow-like topping of powdered sugar and crushed candy canes, it’s quite attractive.

Bouman, 52, of Oakland, gives credit for the basic recipe to her good friend Ina Ippolito of Alameda.

The two met while they were waitressing at Walkers Pie Shop, and they’ve been getting together to bake holiday treats for more than 15 years.

Bouman says Ippolito introduced her to the concept of combining cream cheese with peppermint in a snowball cookie, but she changed the recipe to bars because “it was just so painful to make all those snowballs.”

After trying the bars as a contest judge, I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I used my clout to get the recipe from Food Editor Jenny Slafkosky, who also agreed there was something special about them.

When I baked them at home and shared them at a neighborhood cookie exchange and at the office, the response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic — so much so that I decided I’d be neglecting my journalistic duties if I failed to give Bouman some kudos.

So, I’m happy to bestow upon Bouman a belated Honorable Mention in the 2006 ANG Newspapers Cookie and Candy Contest and to share this recipe with our readers — it’s a great way to use up all those leftover candy canes. Give these bars a try. I guarantee they’ll be the hit of your holidays.

Elsa Bouman’s Peppermint Cream Cheese Bars
Dough:
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Filling:
3/4 cup cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup finely crushed peppermint candy or candy canes (Bouman likes Leo’s)
1 drop red food coloring

Topping:
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup finely crushed peppermint candy or candy canes

Directions:
In a mixing bowl, cream butter and 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar; add vanilla. Stir in flour; knead until well-mixed. Reserve half of dough. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate. Press remaining dough into bottom of 9″ x 9″ glass pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes. Let cool.

For filling, combine cream cheese and milk in a small bowl. Crush candy canes (1 box — about 12 regular size) in food processor or blender. Stir in sugar, candy and food coloring; mix well. Spread this filling layer onto cooled bottom layer, then roll out reserved dough with a rolling pin to square-ish shape. Lay it on top and gently press into corners to cover filling. (Tip: Once you roll out the dough, gently set your glass pan on top to create square impression. Cut dough to fit.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes.

For topping, combine sugar and candy canes and sprinkle on top, pressing down gently, and cut into small squares while warm. (If you find bars too soft to cut while warm, they can be refrigerated or frozen. Thaw slightly before cutting.)

You can e-mail Kari Hulac at khulac@angnewspapers.com or call her at (925) 416-4837.

The whole designer water thing is getting out of control. We just received in our office a box of NUI Kid Water.

Water for kids?

Yep, apparently to make a buck, NUI (pronounced “New-ee,” Hawaiian for “big and abundant”) decided it would be a good idea to add sugar and juice to water, make it a fun color and sell it to kids. Um, last I checked water with 40 percent juice is usually called a juice drink. Doesn’t the FDA have rules about such things?

Boy, just what a parent wants just when child obesity is making daily newspaper headlines. Water with sugar in it. I’m sure kids who drink this stuff WILL end up big and abundant after not too long.

With random surfer cartoon characters and animals on the box, the 5-year-old tester we offered it to knew instantly that it was intended for her. But upon opening the first of three bottles, “Purple Power,” (90 calories and 16 grams of sugar in a 10-ounce serving) it took just one sniff for her to nix even trying it. It smells sort of like weak Kool-Aid or grape Gatorade.

The “Raging Red” at least passed her sniff test, but after a tiny taste she shoved the bottle toward her mother and said “YOU taste it,” looking a bit disgusted.

Her mother agreed it tasted icky.

Finally “Outrageous Orange” got past the first couple of swallows, but she’d have to be pretty thirsty to drink more than that.

About the only thing going for this product is that it’s fortified with a number of vitamins and calcium, but with the added sugar, I’d rather my kids just drink from the tap and eat an apple.

Since I work through lunch most days, I jumped when Oakland entrepreur Kim Cole offered to come make a pizza for lunch a few weeks ago. The idea of talking to someone in person instead of over the phone or via e-mail is a treat in itself. But add a slice of pizza and it’s an over-the-top offer.

Cole arrived shortly before noon, pizza ingredients in hand, and a story to tell. Cole is a young, energetic, super-organized, pizza-loving mom who believes that every family deserves to eat pizza made the right way; at home with fresh, organic dough and fresh ingredients.

The idea to make and sell pizza dough, she says, came while she was on maternity leave, and trying to make a perfect pizza.

“For some reason I became obsessed with making perfect pizza dough,” she says. At first, her pizzas turned out too thick, too thin, too chewy, too dry. But after months of dough-tweaking, Cole hit on perfection. Her moist, double-rise dough turned out pizza crusts that were chewy and crispy, light and substantial, just the right canvas for a handful of toppings.

“I kept playing with it and playing with it,” she says, admitting that for a long while the family ate pizza at least three nights a week. She consulted books by Peter Reinhardt, the guru of pizza, and by Pamela Sheldon Johns. She practiced and experimented.

Cole made so much dough that she started giving away the excess.
“When you make pizza, you make two or three balls of dough. That’s just too much for our family, so I gave it away. People loved it.”

Before long, people started requesting dough. Cole obliged, but she also realized that the world’s appetite for pizza dough just might be a great home business that would allow her to stay home with her daughter.

“I did a lot of research before I started the business,” she says.
She wrote a business plan that included details such as the cost for a business license and projected taxes. She did a profit and loss statement. She also fine-tuned plans to make and store the dough.

Her research done, she decided to invest $10,000 in the project. That was more than three years ago, but she still remembers the day she launched her dough at the Montclair Farmer’s Market.

“I had bought an ice cream cart to keep the dough frozen. That seemed like the best idea for selling at farmer’s markets,” she says. “I packed the cart full of 600 pounds of dough. Then I realized that I couldn’t move it.

“I forgot how heavy it would be.” She got help moving the cart that first day, but decided that ice chests were a much more portable option.

The market went well. Cole’s dough sold out then, just as it does now nearly every time she makes a delivery.

As Cole dumped a ball of dough onto the counter and effortlessly pressed it into a circle in order to make a simple fontina cheese and roasted pepper pizza, she shared some of the challenges of putting her dough on the market.

Before she could sell the dough at Berkeley Bowl, she had to design a label, select packaging, and pay lots of fees; $850 for a bar code to sell in a retail store, $400 for a state wholesale license, $400 to for a county retail license.

Even more frustrating, if she sells more than $5,000 in dough, she will have to pay an additional fee if she wants to state on her label that her dough is made from organic ingredients.

More recently, she decided to expand her business, which meant finding a commercial kitchen to rent - a very expensive proposition, since anytime operations of the business change locations she must pay additional fees.

Cole, who has no desire to grow her business so large that she needs employees, says she has yet to realize her investment — she expects it will be a long time before she makes a profit.

“That will happen. People like the dough and they are buying it. But I’m not really worried about profit right now. My goal is to make this a business that reflects my values and helps people.”

A bag of frozen Mom’s Pizza Dough, enough to make one sumptuous, family pleasing, organic pizza, costs about $5. The dough is sold at Berkeley Bowl, The Pasta Shop in Berkeley and Encinal Market in Alameda. It’s also sold through the home produce delivery company, Planet Organics.

– Jolene Thym

It’s the classic restaurant owner’s dilemma: If I’ve got one ragingly successful hot spot, wouldn’t two locations be even better?
And if two are better than one, how about three?

Mmmmmm. Not necessarily, as many a foodie has found once their fave spot engages in the often-dreaded expansion. When it comes to food being special, bigger is not better.

We worry that this could be the case with The Slanted Door, which recently opened its second Out the Door location in the basement food court of the new San Francisco Centre.

The original Out the Door is around the corner from the fabulously popular 150-table main Vietnamese restaurant in the restored Ferry Building near the foot of Market Street. I haven’t eaten there, but I’d take a wild guess that its small size and proximity to the Mother Ship have made the to-go concept work just fine.

But on a recent visit to the newest Door a friend and I were fairly disappointed.

Expecting just a take-out counter I was surprised to see a spacious dine-in option as well, but I soon realized that the large cafeteria-like room might not be a good thing.

The noise level was almost intolerable, thanks to the space itself as well as the blaring sounds of cocktail tunes a la Frank Sinatra.
As is the way at Slanted Door, we ordered several small plates to share. While the menu tells patrons that dishes come out as they are prepared and suggests just digging in as they arrive, everything pretty much came at once, sort of defeating that way of eating.

While this wasn’t a huge problem, I was given a steamed chicken bun that was ice cold, while my companion’s emitted a happy trail of steam as she cut into it. We had to ask for sauce to accompany the buns, and when I alerted the waitress to the temperature problem, she asked, “What would you like me to do?” which seemed sort of obtuse. Well, uh, bring me a hot bun, please.

Our two main dishes, spicy eggplant and lemongrass tofu, were up to Slanted Door par, and the Door does sticky rice like no other, but the jicama salad with candied pecans fell flat. The microscopically sized nuts disappeared to the bottom of the dish, and without that sweet punch, there wasn’t much flavor to speak of.

After we left I realized the natural diet cola I had ordered (which the waitress touted as a healthy Coke alternative) had never arrived, thus contributing to a nice caffeine withdrawal headache.

Let’s hope Out the Door gets its headaches cured.