There is no photo because we destroyed the evidence

Yesterday, in baking for the farmers' market, I knocked two recipes off the list for the Nana Project: A batch of date-nut tartlets (which Nana called Chess Pies, even though they aren't; and which the s.o. calls Nutjobs) and a batch of no-bake peanut butter bars.

The recipe for date-nut tartlets is one of my favorites, ever. They are basically muffin-sized pecan pies, only made with walnuts and dates. They are positively decadent. And mine are actually better than Nana's, I have to say, because I use real butter instead of margarine and put them in a sour cream pastry crust. I split one with L2 and, when she said it was her favorite of all my baked goods, sent her home with the two that didn't sell, too. Why don't I make these more often? They're easy.

The no-bake peanut butter bars are really good--they're candies along the lines of Reese's Cups, except they're padded out with a little graham cracker, cinnamon, and nutmeg in the peanut butter part. They remind me of Christmas because they used to appear seasonally, like clockwork. They are not, however, ideal for farmers' market sales. For one thing, any size that's big enough to charge money for is big enough to be really cloying. They ought to be cut into the tiny bite-size morsels we always used to snack on over the holidays. And for another thing, the coating of melted semi-sweet chocolate (Ghirardelli, in this case) melts at a temperature remarkably similar to yesterday's ambient one. I had to keep the bars in the cooler with the radishes and baby bok choy, and even then, they turned to goo as soon as they came out into the open air.

26 recipes to go!