Re: this week’s strips.
Igor Bars DO exist. I’ve made them a few times myself.
Lori Curly is the keeper of the official Igor Bar web page. The mai n thing to keep in mind is that they should be soft and chewy, not hard and crunch.
Here’s the basics:
Ingredients:
Chocolate chip cookie dough (from recipe on bag of chocolate chips or purchase pre-fab dough that comes in a tube)
Peanuts, 1.5 cups
Caramels, 100
Milk, 3 teaspoons
Semi-sweet chocolate chips, 16 oz. (Lori uses mint chocolate chips for extra decadence)
Rice Krispies, 6 cups
Marshmallows, 10 oz. (or one very large jar of marshmallow creme)
Margarine (eliminate if using marshmallow creme)
M&Ms, any variety
toffee chips or bars
Plus, if you want:
Anything else you think is excessive, for example:
Chocolate covered expresso beans
Andes mints
Frosting
Decorations
(Although I think the basic version is pretty darn tasty).
You will also need (“Hardware,” as Alton Brown would say):
A foil pan, lasagna size or larger
Cooking spray, margarine or butter to grease the pan
Wax paper or parchment
A double boiler or a microwave
A guillotine (optional)
Insulin (optional)
Lori’s notres: The Igor Bar recipe gives you the basics, but after a year of Igor Bar bake-offs (held at many conventions around the US and UK), here are some transcriptions and notes garnered from experience:
Make sure the pan is well-greased and that it’s lined with wax paper or parchment.
Any chocolate chip bag has the recipe on it. You just need to make sure that they’re chewy and not too dry when they’re done. (I use pre-fab cookie dough that comes in a tube.) John stresses that Igor Bars are designed to be chewy and moist.
Before you pour the caramel over the pan-style cookie base, scatter a cup and a half of peanuts over it. The saltiness of the peanuts works well to counterpoint the sweetness of, frankly, everything else in the Igor Bars.
While your cookies are cooling, start preparing the caramel. You’ll need about a hundred chunks and a double boiler. Remember to add three teaspoons of milk to them as they melt, or they’ll crystallize when they cool. Again, this is supposed to be a soft, chewy layer.
The caramel acts as the glue holding the cookie base to the Rice Krispies Treat topping. Use a full recipe (about six cups of Rice Krispies). And press onto the caramel. Then melt 16 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate using the double boiler, and spoon over the bars. After you’ve tried the basic variation, top this with peanut M&Ms, toffee, or anything else you think is excessive.
Let cool for half an hour, slice, and you get Igor Bars.
Lori’s Microwave note: For those who have a microwave and no double boiler, I recommend using the former instead of the latter. Just put whatever you’re melting into a microwave-safe bowl, put the microwave on half power (remember, the manual will tell you how to do this), and melt for 30-60 seconds at a time. Take the bowl out and stir between melting sessions. Repeat until you have the desired consistency.
More hints from the Army of Dorkness can be found at the Igor Bar web page.
The initial recipe, when run in Dork Tower #19 (it can also be found in “1d6 Degrees of Separation” listed this as enough for eight. It should have read 18. Just watch out for the sugar comas…
Peas, out,