Winner of the crochet bag!

Let's celebrate with a bathtub full of fun! We have a winner for my very first giveaway. {Drum roll, please!}
Gladys from http://gladysspeaks.blogspot.com/ wins my crochet bag, cell phone case and a souvenir of Paraguay. Gladys has a really cool blog with hilarious posts. I just love her comments to news stories.

I baked a cuadruple batch of scandinavian almond bars, but in the maple/pecan variation. Just so that I could give some of these scrumptious goodies to the winner, if she was out of my area. But here's a little gift for all of my readers. I have the special permision of my very good friend, Shilo, to give the recipe to any one who wants it. Taste of Home also has this recipe but slightly different. I encourage you to surf through the TOH website, there are tons of great recipes waiting to be found.
Ok, so here's the recipe:

Scandinavian Almond Bars/Maple-Pecan Bars

1 ¾ cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ tsp almond extract
½ cup sliced almonds
milk
almond icing
Stir together dry ingredients. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and almond extract. Add flour mixture and beat until mixed thoroughly. Divide into fourths. Form into 12 x 3 inch rolls (I like to pat the rolls down a bit, so they aren't quite that thick). Place two rolls on ungreased cookie sheet and brush with milk and sprinkle with almonds. Bake at 325 for 12-14 minutes. While warm, cut crosswise at diagonal into 1 inch strips. Cool.
Icing:
Stir 1 cup powdered sugar, ¼ tsp almond extract and enough milk to make a drizzling consistency. (I put the icing in a little bag, snip off one corner of the bag, and drizzle the icing on the bars)
To change them to Maple Walnut Bars:
Use ¼ tsp vanilla, ¼ tsp maple extract in the dough to replace almond extract and ¼ tsp maple extract in the glaze to replace almond extract then exchange walnuts/pecans for the almonds.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and come back to read my blog again.

(Photos from: pixelio.com and tasteofhome.com)