Bourbon Butterscotch Cashew Bars {with RaveReviews! Culinary Spirits}

Hello BIWB Posse and welcome back for National Bourbon Heritage Month!  It's been far too long since my last post.  Let's just say, life has been full.  Fuller than full, actually.  Ever had a to-do-list that keeps growing and growing?  Well, welcome to my world.  Great news, though, is that I can see the end in sight.  What better way to celebrate that "end-in-sight feeling" than to make some luscious buttery bourbon bars!  

These bars are so good and not really that sweet, yet very rich and buttery.  I changed up the butterscotch caramel layer by adding a little butter and RaveReview! Bourbon Blend.  Really, a bar that is the perfect combination of browned sugar, bourbon and butter.  Easy to pull together and, because butterscotch chips are used as the base, not as scary a making caramel from scratch.  I love how these bars were soft and not runny, yet held their crust with a good crumb.  All around, a keeper!

Have we talked about RaveReviews! Culinary Spirits...Well, keep reading.  

I found this recipe on a baking blog that, I have to admit, I've rightly obsessed over this year.  The blog is Bake or Break, created by Jennifer in NYC, where everything is so well photographed and baked that I just couldn't stop searching, post-after-post.  I appreciate a baking blog where I know that the recipes will work AND that the finished goodies will be thoroughly baked and NOT RAW.  Jennifer has wonderful recipes and great baking book reviews, so I highly recommend checking out her blog.

A huge THANK YOU to the wonderful folks over at RaveReview! for providing us with a complete sampler pack of their culinary spirits.  After careful research RaveReview! has developed spirits that are formulated just for baking and cooking.  Genius!  We here at BIWB have learned over the last 3 years that baking with booze is not as easy as it might look.  Often times, the alcohol content of a particular spirit is too high for what we'd like to achieve in flavor and texture.  With higher alcohol contents (40% and above), it's super hard to bring out the real flavors of the spirits.  Too little booze often results in no flavor.   Too much booze and the result can be an overpowered boozy finish.  

The way I see it, RaveReview! Culinary Spirits are like the Goldilocks of the Bake It With Booze World: not too boozy, not too weak on flavor, but just right!  We have 3 others culinary blends to give it a go, so you'll be seeing more of these again in the months to come.  

Yes, it tastes as good as it looks.  

Trust me.

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Dirty Shirley Cupcakes

Hello, my boozey baker friends! How I have missed you, and baking, and blogging. It's been a very long time since I've posted anything on the blog; Ellen has been keeping things going while I've been MIA. The last thing I posted was the Spiced Rum Pumpkin Poppers, last fall. Wow, that feels like forever and a day ago.

I won't go into detail about the reasons for my baking and blogging hiatus, as I don't want to rain doom and gloom all over a post that I intend to be positive and hopeful. I made these cupcakes over a year ago, intending to do a post corresponding with cherry blossom season. But then spring didn't come for me.

Suffice it to say that it was a very, very long, dark winter.

What's the saying - April showers bring May flowers? Well, after a long winter full of showers (thunderstorms, monsoons, hurricanes, maelstroms, etc.), May brought me some good things - especially hope. I'm finally seeing the sunshine breaking through the clouds, and the flowers are starting to bloom. So, while it's not exactly cherry blossom season in California, this seemed an appropriately-timed post.  

Since we're celebrating a belated spring, full of sunshine, cherry blossoms, and hope for new possibilities, let's start with the recipe for the cocktail that inspired these cupcakes, shall we?

Lime Mojito Bars

I know.  You're saying to yourself, "Self.  If only I could eat that screen!"  And, yes.  Believe it or not, these Lime Mojito Bars do taste as good as they look.  Velvety smooth, sweet lime cure nestled on top of a short bread cookie crust.  The colors just pop in this easy lime curd bar based on the traditional summer cocktail, the Mojito.

The Mojito translates to "something a little wet."  It is a traditional highball cocktail, served in a tall cooler with ice.  Cuba is the birthplace of the Mojito, which consists of 5 simple ingredients: white rum, sugar, lime juice, mint and sparkling water.  Sound refreshing doesn't it?  

I've tried to make a Mojito, once.  It didn't go so well.  I'm not sure why, perhaps it was the mint and lime.  I just couldn't wrap my cocktail taste buds around that flavor combination.  I have always imagined it might have gone much better if only I had an authentic muddler, which is used to mash up the mint leaves into the sugar.  

Maybe I need to try this mojito cocktail making one more time as the weather changes from winter to spring...

In the meantime, I can enjoy these luscious and not too sweet Lime Mojito Bars.  There isn't a whole lot of rum coming through in these bars, and the mint is very subtle.  Next time I may experiment with a darker rum or a spiced rum, both of which might allow the rum flavor to come through.  

These Lime Mojito Bars are smooth...Just don't know how else to describe them.  The lime curd is soft yet holds its shape.  An interesting addition to the curd is a wee bit of milk.  I've never seen that in any of the similar lemon bar recipes I have tried over the years.  Might just have to make that a new "secret" ingredient in my favorite lemon bar recipe.

I've had this recipe for Lime Mojito Bars on my BIWB baking bucket list for quite some time.  It really is a great change up to traditional lemon bars that we've all been making for years.  I'm very sure I'll be making these again and sharing them with friends in the years to come.  

Give this one a try as I'm certain you'll be pleasantly surprised!

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