Bad but goooood!

"Necessity is the mother of invention", right?

Well, that has certainly been true for me this past week. My oven is broken. Yes, after all my teasing with Leslie to start using her oven again, mine has gone kaput! Hubby says it's from being used so much, since it's a new (3yrs) oven!!!

Anyhow, I needed to make cookies. Can't bake them, and since I haven't dabbled much in raw cookies, to the stovetop I went and came up with these decadent cookie bars for the new book. No recipe name yet - not sure what to call them (ideas, anyone?.....)

They are a combo of cocoa, coconut, pecans, and other goodies in the base and a nutty chocolate ganache topping. Yes, bad but gooood!! Well, not SO bad, are they???

I mean, there's no refined sugar in these (with the exception of the chocolate chips, and you can buy grain sweetened non-dairy chips, which are not AS bad). But, there's nothing low-fat or low-cal about these babies. Ohhh, no!! But, they do have a good dose of cocoa powder, and that's jam-packed with antioxidants, right? Oh, and abundant with the healthy fats and protein in nuts. So that's kinda' healthy too.... hmmm... am I trying to justify these cookie bars to you or myself???!

Anyhow, I hope to have my oven back in about a week, but until then, it's stovetop creativity - out of necessity!

Now, on to what many of you are visiting for - the winner of yesterday's contest... is....

Mishka!!

Congrats to you, Mishka... please e-mail me at dreena@everydayvegan.com by Friday! :)