I made Cynthia's little chocolate-coffee-cinnamon-chile bars this weekend. They were great, thanks Cynthia.
I made several substitutions, though, to allow for what I had on hand vs. what the recipe called for. 1) I planned to substitute Kahlua for the other liquers and then mistakenly grabbed the Myers Rum (okay, so I'm not a bartender--brown glass, yellow and red label, looked good to me!) So I actually ended up substituting my substitute. I figured out the error only after it was added and I thought, "Hmmm, smells like rumballs." 2) I used sliced almonds for the pecans. I realize that pecans are more southwestern, but I didn't have any and I can't say the almonds weren't as successful. I especially the way they looked on top, which brings me to substitution #3. 3) Since I'm not much of a baker my baking equipment is sparse and I don't have an 8" square pan. Usually deviate there to a 9" springform round. But this time I used a silicone jello ring mold because this was a soft/chewy cookie and I thought it would lend itself to cutting bar shapes better than a full round (with points that would easily break off) and I was right. Where almonds trumped the pecans was the handful of sliced almonds I strewed around the bottom of the mold before adding the dough--baked and turned over, the ivory flecks of almond against the almost-black cookie was very attractive.
Anyway, these are serious, adult cookies and we loved them. My husband asked if I couldn't bake these into crisp flat cookies to use in homemade ice cream sandwiches this summer.
Here's a link to Cynthia's recipe:
A Quiet Little Mexican Bar