Coffee Hour: Department Domination Edition

If you've read my blog at all, you know that I go all out for my department's coffee hour when it is my group's turn to host. There is sort of an unofficial ranking of the best coffee hours in the department. The Barnett Group/Bedzyk/Chung coffee hour is usually somewhere near the top. However, it is generally accepted that Mason/Faber is one of the best. 

However, the Mason/Faber contingent is disbanding.

Professors are moving and retiring, and the Mason/Faber coffee hour will be no more. That leaves room for a new reigning coffee hour champion.

Enter: Barnett

The normal recipe: hummingbird cupcakes pre-cream cheese frosting

My labmate Ann and I decided that we were going to pour all of our confectionery efforts into totally bringing it this past coffee hour. I had a normal recipe in mind (these delicious and somewhat healthy hummingbird cupcakes). However, I also wanted to find the most insane recipe I could find to put our coffee hour over-the-top.

I present to you: Man-Whore Bars.

These bars are so intense that they put their predecessor of Slutty Brownies to shame. They look fairly innocuous when you look at them from the top view. But then you look at them from the side...

Holy moly.

I had to take a picture of the cross-section of these beauties because it is just so insane. And then you cut into them....

Edible geology!

I was actually laughing hysterically as I cut these bars because I had to put my entire weight on top of the knife to get it to cut through.

We said we were going to bring it this coffee hour, and ooohhhh, boy did we bring it.

Man-Whore Bars

From Baker's Royale

Ingredients

1 16oz. package of ready made cookie dough, or one batch of homemade (I made the cookie recipe on the back of the Nestle morsels bag, which is the best, duh)
1 batch of chocolate ganache (recipe below)
16 regular size Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
16 Oreos
10 oz bag marshmallows (mini ones work best)
5 cups Rice Krispies cereal
3 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Create a foil sling by lining a 9x9 pan with foil with a two inch overhang on each side, using two criss crossed foil pieces. Spray sling with non-stick bake spray.
2. Spread cookie dough evenly in the bottom of the pan so that it is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick (this will use about 2/3 of the cookie dough). Place pan in oven and bake for approximately 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.
3. Place excess cookie dough on a cookie sheet and bake according to recipe directions. (I actually made more cookies and chose a few of them to break up for the topping.) Remove from oven and set aside to cool. Once cooled, crush 1-2 cookies to a fine crumb and set aside.
4. Once cookie crust in pan has cooled, spread half of ganache on top.
5. Melt butter in a large pot over low heat. Add marshmallows, and stir until completely melted. Add in Rice Krispies, and stir until well-combined. Spread half of the Rice Krispies mixture over ganache.
6. Place a layer of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on top of Rice Krispies layer. Next, place an Oreo on top of each Reese's cup. From there, spread remaining Rice Krispies mixture on top.
7. Spread remaining ganache on top, and sprinkle with crushed cookies.

Chocolate Ganache
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter

Place chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Place cream in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil. Pour boiling cream over chocolate. Gently stir until chocolate is completely melted and shiny, about 2 minutes. Set aside to cool and thicken at room temperature about 1-2 hours.