Frypan Date Honey Bars

plentysweetlife

Mar 3

Today's recipe for Frypan Date Honey Bars comes from my other Grandma. She would write her favorites in one of her old church cookbooks, and this is one recipe she wrote in there. I'd like to think that this one came from her mother, who lived with Grandma and Gramp for a few years at the end of her life. This photo is of my great-grandparents on their wedding day! I love this so much!

I sure hope this recipe is one of my great-grandmother's. It sounds like it could have been originally made on a wood cookstove. It uses a frypan - so I used an old cast iron pan that might have belonged to her. It uses honey instead of sugar, and might have been from a time when sugar wasn't so easy to get but honey might have been accessible on a farm (both sides of my family were farmers). It says to bake it at 280 degrees, which is a very low temperature, and seems like how low the temp would be in an old cookstove. Well, we'll never know for sure, but I love the idea of the recipe being from my great-grandma and baking these bars in a cast iron pan. Let's get started with these very easy to make and amazingly delicious bars.

Here is the recipe as I made it:

Frypan Date Honey Bars

Mix together:

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Set aside.

Combine:

3 eggs

1 cup honey

1/3 cup soft shortening (I used butter)

1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat well.

Add flour mixture and beat well.

Add:

1 cup dates, chopped

1 cup nuts (I used pecans)

Preheat frypan (I put the pan in the oven while I was chopping the dates and nuts), and grease well (I used butter for this).

(I used a pan that was 9 1/2" across the top, and says 7" on the bottom, even though it is more like 8" across. This made the bars a bit thick and that made them have to bake longer. Next time I'd use a larger pan and that would probably make the time to bake them about right for the recipe at 280 degrees.)

Bake at 280 degrees for 30-35 minutes (this was hard to see on the bottom of the card, but I think this is what it says) - because I used a small sized pan, I had to bake these an extra 25 minutes - a larger pan would have been about right for this low temperature.

Sprinkle powdered sugar over top after bars are cooled (this was also hard to read, but the bars are "plenty sweet" and a sprinkling of powdered sugar seemed more appropriate than topping the bars with powdered sugar icing or glaze, but you could do that).

These bars use pretty simple ingredients - in fact, I'd say they're a great pantry recipe - as long as you have the nuts, dates, and honey.

The batter was a little lumpy as first, but keep mixing and the lumps will come out.

There are a LOT of nuts and dates in there for this small amount of batter.

The batter is LOADED!

The recipe said to heat up the pan, so I put it in the oven while I chopped the nuts and dates. I used a stick of butter with with the paper rolled back to grease the pan well.

Here we go - into the oven!

Here it is right out of the oven - the top has some bubbles, but it won't matter once you dig in!

The recipe said something about powdered sugar at the end, but I couldn't read it because the recipe just below it had been put over the bottom of the recipe - and the tape was discolored. Oh well - time to wing it! I sprinkled powdered sugar over the top of the bars, but you could make a powdered sugar frosting or glaze over it if you want to. I don't think it needs a frosting - they're "plenty sweet"!

I highly recommend trying these while they're still a little warm.

The smaller pan I used made the bars more the size of a piece of cake. A larger pan would make them more like a bar - not so high.

I have to say - these bars are one of my new favorites! I love that you can make them in a frypan, and I think that making a batch of these bars in the pan would make someone a wonderful gift - welcome to your new home, thank you teacher for doing all you do for my child, happy bridal shower, celebrate the weekend. The list could go on and on. Everyone loves cast iron pans these days, and making a batch of these delicious bars full of honey, dates, and nuts would be lovely - don't forget to include the recipe! I hope you try these Frypan Honey Date Bars and start celebrating something - anything!

Comment