These crumb cookies bars are definitely going to be your best friends. They come with no frills attached and would truly prove to be your friend in need. When you are hard pressed for time and have to feed a crowd and want a simple no-fuss quick bars, these crumb bars save you a day. Crumbly buttery shortbread bars with a vibrant tart fruit filling sandwiched within.
These fruity bars are so incredible that they’ll remind you of your best pies and crumbles, but without any sloppy serving of unmanageable serving on a dessert plate. The whole thing is like a breeze. Through in some good ingredients, pop them into oven, cut into squares and voila! Isn’t that sound simple enough?
And the best thing is you could add any of your favorite fruit to these bars. As this is the season of stone fruit, my obvious yet favorite choice was these vibrant cherries and plums. Cherries accentuated the color of the fruit filling while plums added to the tartness, which paired well with the buttery and sweet vanilla shortbread.
These are good enough to be served in breakfast or to be packed in your lunch box to be enjoyed in afternoon snack or to be relished in dessert alongside a generous scoop of very good vanilla ice cream.
I took them to my family and they were polished real quick. Kids liked them a lot, I couldn’t believe that they accepted a fruit bake so peacefully!
Recipe adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
Ingredients
Crumb
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
90 gm unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
1/2 of a beaten egg
seeds of 1/2 vanilla bean
1/8 tsp salt
Filling
Zest and juice of one lime
1 1/2 cup fresh cherries and plums, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cornstarch
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius and line 8 x 8 inch square baking pan with parchment paper, with some extra paper hanging off the two opposite sides of the pan.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, vanilla seeds. With a pastry blender or fork, work the chilled butter and the egg into the flour mixture until mixture resembles a coarse meal.
- Pat half the crumb base into the bottom of the prepared pan.
- In a bowl of a food processor, briefly pulse the fruit filling ingredients until the fruit is coarsely chopped but not pureed.
- Spread the filling over crumb base and sprinkle the remaining crumbs evenly over the fruit.
- Bake cookies for 35-40 minutes, until lightly brown on top. Cool completely before cutting into squares.
