Hey there. We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've written three dozen cookbooks for seven New York publishers (not counting two knitting books for Bruce and a memoir for Mark). We're excited to share our passion about food and cooking with you.

We're headed into the kitchen to make some irresistible jammy oat bar cookies. We've got a one-minute cooking tip about storing cheese. And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

[00:57] Our one-minute cooking tip: wrap cheese in fresh plastic wrap every time you open it.

[02:46] We're making jammy oat bar cookies. Mark has been taking these cookies to his literary seminars all this year. Lots of Cather and Faulkner with lots of cookies. You can't beat that.

Here's the recipe:

Jammy Oat Bar Cookies

Heat the oven to 350F (175 C—no convection or fan)

Line a 9 x 13-inch (23 x 33-cm) baking pan with parchment paper.

In a stand mixer, beat at medium-low speed until creamy and light (about 5 minutes):

• ¾ pound (3 sticks or 340 g) unsalted butter, cut into small
• pieces
• 1 cup (215 grams) packed dark brown sugar
• ¾ cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar

Beat in 1 large egg until smooth.

Stop the mixer and beat down the inside of the bowl, then

beat in 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.

Beat in 2¼ cups (285 grams) all-purpose or plain flour, 2 1/4 cups (200 g) rolled oats, and 1½ cups (175 grams) toasted walnut pieces, just until the flour is incorporated.

Press about two-thirds of this dough into an even layer in the prepared baking pan. Spread with 1½ cups (480 grams) jam, preserves, or marmalade (do not use jelly!) and dollop the remaining dough in small bits on top, pressing them gently into an even layer with some jam showing through.

Bake until set and browned, about 45 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out and slicing into bar cookies.

[15:19] What’s making us happy in food this week: pretzels with grapes (!) and quince paste.

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough.

And together with Bruce, we have written and published three dozen

cookbooks at seven New York publishers.

We're working on yet another, which you're going to hear about soon enough.

Our passion is food and cooking.

I may have a sub.

Passion on Dante, but that's a different matter for a different podcast.

Uh, that's our passion here is food and cooking.

So we want to share that passion with you after having been in this business

for, I don't know, a long time.

When was our first book published?

Uh,

1999.

And in between 36 books have been published.

Kind of crazy.

In this episode of our podcast, we're going to, as always, give

you a one minute cooking tip.

We're heading for the kitchen.

kitchen to make a recipe that Bruce makes weekly at this point.

I, it's crazy.

And then we're going to tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

So let's get started.

Our one minute cooking tip.

Now, my grandmother is going to roll over in her grave.

As I say this, stop reusing plastic wrap.

Stop it.

We're specially with things like cheese, especially with cheese.

Unwrap the cheese and throw away that piece of plastic wrap because every

time you unwrap a piece of cheese, use a fresh piece of plastic wrap to store

for the next time used plastic wrap never sticks and seals as well as the

first time it's peeled off the roll.

And let me also say, and this is about storing cheese, even in plastic bags.

Remember that cheese is a moldy product and even some of the mold you can't see.

And the problem is the mold adheres to the inside of the plastic

wrap or even the plastic bag.

bag.

And in fact, you can get a quicker molding cheese because you're back to

reintroducing constantly the mold to it.

It's better to use a fresh piece of plastic wrap on that cheese,

because again, what's left on there, the bacteria and all that kind of

stuff, uh, you know, you want to get a new sheet and start again.

Let me also say that it's weird if you wrap, I don't know, Stilton and

then unwrap it and forget, which.

piece of plastic wrap you used and wrap up Gouda with Stilton plastic wrap.

See,

flavor distance.

We call that flavor distance.

You don't want to do that.

Keep them separate and stop reusing plastic wrap.

Before we get to the next step.

segment of this podcast.

Let me say that we do have a newsletter.

In fact, our recipe for this podcast will come out in our

newsletter, and you can subscribe to it on our website, bruceandmark.

com.

We, uh, don't capture your email.

I don't even know who you are, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

So you can sign up there and receive our newsletter for recipes like this one.

So, what's up next is we're going to make jammy oat bars.

And this is a recipe from one of our books, The Ultimate Cookbook.

But before we get started, I'm going to tell you something about this recipe.

I teach a lot of lit classes.

I don't know if you know this or not, but I was an old lit academic,

an English academic back in the day.

I guess I am an old one now.

I wasn't so old back then.

I was young back then, but I'm old now.

And, uh, I gave that up to become a full time writer.

But it's come rolling back in my life.

I just came off of eight weeks on Willa Cather.

It was brilliant.

I went to every one of them.

I'm heading into six weeks on William Faulkner.

I'm coming to two of them.

Okay, he's going to try Faulkner.

This is a big deal.

Bruce hasn't ever read Faulkner, and I'm very excited that he's going

to actually struggle with the sound and the fury with the rest of us.

And you know, I've got classes coming up this fall.

fall on you Dora Welty and poetry classes all kinds of things in my

life and I always bring treats and maybe that's why you don't show up to

these things is I always bring treats and Bruce often makes jam oat bars.

These are the treats I make these jammy oat bars as Mark said the original recipe

was in our book The Ultimate Cookbook.

That recipe used shortening and black berry jam but every

time I make them with butter.

For his class, people go crazy.

So now the only way I make them is a butter.

Butter is a beverage.

And

I mix up the flavor of jam each week.

And, you know, the original had walnuts in it or pecans.

I changed the nuts.

So we're doing a jammy oat bar today with a four berry jam and with walnuts.

So here's what's going on.

The oven is already heated to 350, so I don't have to think about that.

What is that in

centigrade?

175 Celsius.

And what

you hear is me cutting a piece of parchment to fit into a 9 by 13 inch pan.

What is that?

A

22 by 33 centimeter pan.

If you don't know how to do this, check out our TikTok channel,

Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

You will learn how to easily fit a piece of parchment into your 9 by 13.

Yeah, in fact,

this video of these very jammed out bars appears.

It also appears under my Instagram feed, it appears in the Facebook group

Cooking with Bruce and Mark, and the recipe will appear there along with the

videos if you want to check those out.

So now, we've got a stand mixer out, and we've got three sticks of butter.

Alright, yeah.

That's the North American market.

That's three quarters of a pound of butter or 340 grams of butter.

You want to use, I think unsalted butter because you want to

control the salt of this thing.

Always use unsalted butter.

And by the way, it's not softened.

It's just been cut into pieces because if you don't know and haven't listened

to this podcast enough, cold butter traps air better, which makes for

more tender baked goods after beating.

So we've got.

All of that butter in the mixer and we're adding one cup or 215 grams

of packed dark brown sugar and three quarters of a cup or 150 grams of

granulated white sugar or caster sugar.

If you're using caster sugar, go by weight, 150 grams, not by volume.

And I am turning this on slowly at first so that the chunks of butter don't

come flying out at me and I'm going to cream this sugar and butter together.

Creaming it just means beating them until they are, well, creamy, and fluffy.

And this is a part of baking where a lot of people rush it, and a lot

of people skimp, and they don't.

Beat it long enough.

It needs to be light and fluffy and it takes a while to get there So while it

gets there, let's talk about the nuts.

Okay, so we're gonna use one and a half cups In this recipe we're using

walnut pieces, but you can use one and a half cups or a hundred and

seventy five grams of any kind of nut.

Pecans, almonds, Hazelnuts, make sure they're skinned, hazelnuts.

You can use anything you want and what you want to use is pieces.

So if they're hazelnuts or You want to chop them a little bit.

If they're pecans, you want pecan pieces, walnut pieces.

You can even use slivered almonds.

And those

you don't really have to chop at all.

Or you can use whole almonds that you chop a little bit.

And what we want to do is toast them.

So I've got a skillet, a dry skillet, sitting over low heat, and I'm just

going to pour the nuts into it.

And again, just like we have said in the past, when we toast our spices so they get

fragrant, it only takes a minute or two.

As soon as these nuts Get fragrant.

I don't necessarily want them to get brown.

I just want to smell Nuttiness, which means the oils coming

out of them Meanwhile

this entire time the mixer has been going remember that butter was cool

from the fridge and cut into small pieces It's gonna take a long time for

it to get fluffy and light and I would tell you Six minutes, seven minutes.

So what I'm going to do is take these nuts and pour them out on a

cutting board, just so they'll cool.

I don't want to add hot nuts to a batter.

Ooh, suddenly sounds like a different kind of podcast.

I don't want to add hot nuts to a batter right now.

I'm going to spread them out and we're going to come back when that

bit over there is, uh, creamed up.

Okay.

Our nuts are toasted.

Our nuts are cooled.

Our nuts are chopped.

Our nuts smell good, and the mixer is still going.

I podcast we go on.

The mixer is still going.

Our butter sugar mixture is super fluffy.

So now, without stopping that mixer, I'm cracking a large egg, and pouring

that in and letting it mix in.

One egg, right?

One large egg.

And now, I am going to stop the mixer because I want to scrape down the sides.

Make sure all of this deliciously creamed butter and sugars mix

with the egg and turn it back on.

And I like to mix in the salt, cinnamon, and vanilla at this point.

A teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, and two teaspoons of vanilla.

That's ten milliliters of vanilla.

And now that's a beautiful mixture.

I'm going to turn it off again.

And Mark is going to add our dry ingredients, which

are Okay, here they come.

Two and a quarter cups, or 285 grams of all purpose or plain flour.

And 200 grams, or two and a quarter cups.

Same amount, in terms of volume, different weights.

Two and a quarter cups, or 200 grams of regular rolled oats.

Don't you dare use steel cut oats, and do not use quick oats.

Hey, my teeth were too expensive to get steel cut oats.

These are just

standard rolled oats.

We're going to put that in there.

Bruce is going to turn the mixer on very slowly.

And as these dry ingredients get mixed in, I'm going to drop those nuts in as well.

And this is only going to take about 30 seconds.

I don't want to overdo it.

I just want everything incorporated.

And look at this Mark, it looks like a perfect cookie dough.

Dino, just to say, in case you don't know about baking, here's the rule.

Before you add the flour, you basically, I mean you can, but

you basically cannot Overbeat it.

Yes, you can.

I know Rose Levy Barenbaum is rising up to strike me right now.

You can overbeat it.

Okay, yes, you can.

But for all, as my grandmother would have said, for all intensive purposes,

for all intensive I still want to know what an intensive purpose is.

I do too.

For all intensive purposes, um, you can just, uh, let that mixer go and

go and go until you get the flour in.

And then you You only want to go until it's incorporated, because otherwise you

start to stretch out the wheat gluten.

Don't want

to do that.

Nope, and it'll get tough.

Okay, so this next part is really fun.

I have to take two thirds of this batter and I'm going to just eyeball it.

Eyeballing it is fine.

And I'm going to press it into the bottom of that prepared pan.

Are you pressing it with your

eyeball?

Oh yeah, well you can eyeball how much two thirds is.

I'm using my hands and my hands are slightly wet.

I wet them because it's easier to press this in so the

dough doesn't stick as much.

And notice, Mark, I did not dump my two thirds of it into the

middle and tried to press it out.

I dolloped it all over the bottom so it is easier to get a nice even layer.

Even flat layer and

you don't want to press that too hard You don't make this like a

cookie, but you do want to you know, get it into place across that.

Oh, yeah Okay, and then now that that's done.

I'm gonna spread one and a half cups or four hundred and 80 grams of,

we have today a mixed berry jam.

It is Bon

Maman's four fruit

preserves.

I'm going to be really honest and tell you, we got it on sale at

Costco and it was what was on sale.

So that's what we're using.

You can use anything, any jam or preserve at this point.

That is, you could use apricots.

Jam or preserves, raspberry, fig, blackberry, no jellies,

so no Concord grape jelly, no strawberry jelly, no apple jelly.

I want

to say, I once made this with some homemade sweet orange marmalade, and

Mark brought them to, and there's a British woman in his studio.

And she said, Ooh, marmalade.

And she took one bite, and she was so revolted.

Because to her, marmalade is bitter.

And I had sweet orange marmalade.

And she was like, This is not proper marmalade.

It wasn't.

It was sweet marmalade.

Oh my gosh.

Anyway, yes, you can use marmalades of all sorts.

What you just want is a thick marmalade.

pulpy mixture like a jam or a preserve.

No jellies.

Again, I can't stress this enough.

No jellies.

Don't you dare make this ooh gag with mint jelly.

Oh, mint.

Oh, disgusting.

Okay, so you get the jam or preserve spread out and now you're gonna

take the rest of that dough and you're gonna crumble it on top.

And you're gonna evenly spread it out so that you get a nice even layer.

It's kind of like a little cobblery looking, right?

I want to see some of that jam between the pieces.

And now it's going in the oven for 45 minutes.

It will be, the jam will be bubbling, it will be browned and beautiful, and then

we're going to let it cool entirely.

It's done and it's out and it has cooled.

And I want to say a couple things before we taste it.

First of all, we cooled this quite a bit and you can cool this on down to

room temperature and we have done this.

I can tell you, you can cool it down to room temperature.

You can pull it at, you know, turn it over, pull it out of the baking

pan, turn it upside down, flip it out, then flip it back around again.

And you can wrap this thing once it's fully cooled in plastic wrap

and shove it in the freezer and it comes out just fine when it's thawed.

Sometimes

I make.

Four at a time and freeze them for his classes.

No

problem freezing this thing at all.

It's sometimes easier to freeze it as a block because you get less

freezer burn on individual pieces.

But, you know, hey, you could even do individual pieces if you wanted

to.

My favorite piece is the corner.

So I am cutting off a corner of this and I'm going to cut that in

half so we could both try it and.

It's so, um, delicious.

It's really nutty.

It's like, uh, imagine a, uh, fruit crisp but a cookie in cookie form.

This is what

I

want Pop Tarts to taste like, and they never do.

No, Pop Tarts never taste like that.

Trust me, after writing over 20, 000 original recipes in our career.

We've written some original recipes for homemade Pop Tarts and even they

are always a little disheartening.

Not

to me.

I love Pop Tarts.

But there's so much work to make homemade Pop Tarts for so little bang for the buck.

But this is not little bang for the buck.

No, this is

delicious.

This is nutty and buttery and jammy.

And now I know why.

Everyone in your class goes crazy over

these.

Yeah, these are really great.

Again, if you want to see a video of this recipe, it's on our TikTok channel.

It's on Instagram under my name, Mark Scarborough.

You can find it there.

You can find it on Facebook, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

We post this thing everywhere.

And we post the ingredients and the recipe with it.

You know, hey, it's a public service announcement.

So, um, you can find it there.

And we would love to see what you do with jam oat bars because we think

They are an absolute fantastic dessert treat any time of the week, even

if you're not reading Willa Cather.

So that's the podcast so far.

Again, let me say, it'd be great if you could rate and subscribe to this podcast.

If you can give it a review, that's even better.

better if you subscribe, you won't miss it for a single week.

And we really appreciate that being an unsupported podcast as we are, but

otherwise we're going to tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

For

me, it's extra crunchy, dark pretzels, eating them with green grapes.

I know you and pretzels and pretzels and grapes.

It just seems wrong.

It seems like pieces of pretzel get stuck in the grape and it's all

like, it's like pretzels and gum.

No.

Pretzels and grapes are, ew, pretzels and gum, that is so disgusting.

It just seems like, no.

You got the sweet, the sweet grapes, the salty pretzels, the juicy grapes.

I know.

This way I don't have to like drink a Coke with the pretzels, I got the

juice from the grapes going down.

So,

so at night we've been lost in this Swedish series, I don't know if

you've seen it, but, uh, there's this Swedish series called Bonus Family.

And it's, it's four seasons long, and it's about this family in which, uh,

Couples get divorced and, um, the, the bonus family is this central family of two

divorced people who bring their children from previous marriages with them.

And so now they have a bonus family.

And I guess in Sweden these are called bonus papa and bonus mama instead

of step.

And that goes, even if you're not married, you're still the

bonus papa and bonus mama.

So it's four seasons and it's.

Unbelievably sad and funny all at the same time it this characters can go

from being pathetic to being hysterical to be acting being pathetic again.

It's really engaging.

I honestly after four seasons and we finished it, I felt

like I almost had a death.

I got so close to these people from binging this thing over

like two and a half weeks.

But let me say that in every evenings TV watch Bruce would always have

pretzels and great sitting there on.

I was always like, that is just.

That's a textural wrongness that's going on there.

No, it's a textural rightness.

No, I don't, I don't know.

It seems kind of bad.

Okay, what's making me happy in food this week?

So, a couple weekends ago, we went out to a friend's house in the

Hamptons in New York on Long Island.

And, uh, we spent a long weekend with our friends there.

And, uh, the husband left halfway through and we stayed with the wife

and it was lovely, we had a lovely time and she brought in a dog.

A ton, a veritable ton of charcuterie and cheese from New York City,

and we just grazed on charcuterie and cheese, and that's actually

not what's making me happy.

What's making me happy is something that I've never had before, and you're

gonna be shocked, I think, maybe?

I don't know.

She had to go with, especially the big stinky cheeses, like the,

uh, Camposola and the Stilton.

She had quince paste, and I have to tell you, I have never

eaten quince paste before.

And it has been

put in front of you A thousand times.

A thousand times.

You've

always pushed it aside.

I do.

I push it aside in French restaurants.

I push it aside always with a cheese squirt.

You think it's pas de fouille.

You think it's

candy.

Yeah,

I'm like, I don't want anything sweet to ruin this beautiful cheese.

But I started eating quince paste with, uh, Camposola and these

really stinky, uh, runny cheeses and it was kind of a revelation.

Isn't it funny that at my age and being in the food career this long, there are

things that are kind of ordinary like quince paste that I've never tried.

They're ordinary if you eat cheese courses and go to nice restaurants

and have a big cheese thing.

And I, you know, I, I've seen quince paste a million times and I've always pushed it

away as like, no, I don't want dessert.

And I loved it.

It was incredibly floral and sweet and it went with the stinky

cheeses so, um, well, I guess.

I was wrapping pieces of mortadella

around it.

You

were.

I even said at one point, I'm only eating food in quince paste form from now on.

So, I guess Quintspace made me very happy, and it's wild that in my mid

sixties, I could still find something that I'm not exactly sure I've ever had

before, so huzzah for trying new things.

Well, that's our podcast for this week.

Thanks for being on this journey with us.

We know there are a lot of podcasts out there, and you can choose from a

lot of podcasts And we really thank you for choosing ours to spend your

time with.

And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food, so tell

us what's making you happy in food this week at our Facebook

group Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

We would love to read about your experiences with food and

continue to share ours here on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.