Raspberry Coconut Oatmeal Bars

I recently reformatted my computer all by myself (+10 geek squad points!) and ended up using these to pay off a friend who got me Microsoft Office and a couple of clutch photo editing programs (Photoshop and Lightroom, here I come!).  Thanks, Jay!

I randomly came across the recipe while perusing the interwebs and thought it sounded good.  I noticed that the recipe called for a food processor to mix the dry ingredients together, as well as a pastry blender to blend the butter and dry ingredients together – neither of which I had.  I never needed to make a crust this way before, and had only ever used Jay’s pastry blender to make guacamole (it’s REALLY great for guacamole).  Not having that or the food processor didn’t stop me – I figured I could do it all by hand by… furiously stirring a fork.  I got the dry ingredients taken care of just fine, but the dough blending became challenging once the butter came into play.

After making the crust for these bars with a fork, acquiring a dough blender is now at the top of my to-buy list.  The fork method was tedious to say the least.

I’ll be able to actually have some pretty pictures soon using something better than Microsoft Office Picture Manager!