Raspberry Oat Crumble Bars

I enjoy creating opportunities to wear my apron. I feel it’s only allowed when baking, not with cooking. Well, perhaps for the especially messy cooking…but with baking it just feels right. Broke out the apron today to bake these wonderful creations – raspberry oat crumble bars.

I found this on fantastic baking blog that I encourage you all to check out: 17 and Baking. I’m excited to try quite a bit of the recipes featured on her blog as I continue expanding my baking repertoire and finding more opportunities to wear my apron.

This recipe is only slightly different than how Elissa wrote in on her blog:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5 oz (10 Tbsp) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 1 Tbsp milk
• 1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
• 3/4 cup seedless raspberry jam (I thoroughly enjoy jam and slathered on slightly more than this. How can there be too much jam?!?)

How to Make:

Preheat your oven to 375 and grab your food processor! Mix up your flour, brown sugar and salt in the food processor first. Then put in the butter pieces and pulse away until the mixture starts to look crumbly. This is a good sign…crumbly = excellent. At this point pour in your Tbsp on milk and make sure it’s mixed in.

For those poor unfortunate souls (name that movie!!) without a food processor…don’t know how you survive. However, you’ll be glad to know this recipe doesn’t discriminate against your lack of materials. Grab a pastry cutter to work everything together or use a fork too. Prior to my wonderful food processor addition, I would use a fork for this sort of task. However – do be careful to not overwork the butter in, you want crumbs. (I speak from experience…a previous fruit crisp was mush because the butter was worked in too much. Not pretty. Don’t be like me.)

At this point, grab your oats and a big bowl. Pour in the mixture from the food processor and work your crumbs and oatmeal into a bigger crumbly mixture. Again – don’t overmix! Just get it all worked in together.

Separate out 3/4 a cup of this mixture (for the delicious topping).

Pour the rest into a buttered or parchment-lined 9×9 pan. Press it down to make the nice, thick crust.

Take your jam and spread it out on top. If you’re as into jam as me, or like raspberry a LOT or you just want to go BIG with your dessert – slather on a bit more than the 3/4 cup. Then, crumble the rest so it’s spread out on top evenly.

Pop it in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Pull it out to cool when it looks like perfection…I thought that was at 22.3 minutes. But I’ll let you be the judge of that. If you have a cooling rack…or like me, an extra grate from the oven (hey, I’m resourceful!), set it on there to cool. That way to air can move over and under the pan.

When cool, slice it up into squares. I encourage the addition of a little whipped cream…ice cream…frozen yogurt…ANYTHING to jazz it up a bit. If you’re into the ‘simple’ dessert, it’ll still be delicious on its own. But I like to be a proponent of adding ice cream or frozen yogurt.

However it’s served – DIG IN! Happy Saturday!

Tags: Bars, Jam, Oats, Raspberry