Easy, quick recipe with tangy sour cherries, vanilla and the perfect crumbly base.
I love making bars. They are so easy to bake, you just have to make a base, a filling, and some fruit and crumbs go on the top then you bake and slice them. Everybody can make them.
Last weekend I had to come up with a dessert, which is fast, and you can make a huge batch easily. Bars are the perfect ones for such situation, because you can easily double or even tripple the recipe. Since it’s winter you can’t really buy nice berries like raspberries or strawberries. But we always have some canned sour cherries at home (like the ones I used in the white chocolate sour cherry parfait) so it was obvious to use them.
For the base I made my perefect crumbly sweet base from the ultimate strawberry-lemonade bars recipe. I love this recipe, seriously I could eat the plain base just as it is.
Then instead of the lemony filling I used some vanilla extract and a little bit of cloves because they go so good with cherries. A layer of sour cherries and a few crumbs on the top and they are good to go in the oven.
And now I have to admit the bad things about this recipe. It takes an hour to bake them and then you have to wait until they cool down. I know, I know it's cruel. But they are soo delicious, I would really recommend trying them out!
And as I said before you can use any kind of fruit that you like.
So on your marks, get set, go! Bake these amazing bars this weekend!
Sour Cherry Vanilla Bars
Prep Time: 20 min. Baking Time: 1 hour Total Time: 3+ hours Portions: 9 bigger or 12 smaller squares
Ingredients:
For the base:
½ cup or 115g butter
½ cup or 110g granulated sugar
¼ cup or 40g brown sugar
1 and ½ cup or 210g all purpose flour
a pinch of salt
For the vanilla filling:
1 egg
½ cup joghurt
1/3 cup or 75g granulated sugar
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon or 10g vanilla sugar
¼ cup or 35g all purpose flour
For the sour cherry layer:
2 and a ½ heaped cups sour cherries (seedless, drained)
1/3 cup or 75g granulated sugar
2 tablespoon or 20 g vanilla sugar
½ teaspoon grounded cloves
2 tablespoons semolina or cornstarch
2 tablespoons all purpose flour (more if you use frozen cherries)
Directions:
1.Preheat the oven to 350 F or 180 C. Line an 8-inch or 20cm square pan with parchment paper.
2.The base and the crumble:
Melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl at 30 seconds intervalls around 1 minute.
Add both sugars and mix it well with a fork.
Mix in the flour and salt until you get a dry mixture with smaller and bigger crumbs.
Put aside ¾ cup of the mixture.
Spread the rest of the mixture in the pan and press it down with a spatula until you get a flat, packed base. Set the pan aside.
3.Vanilla filling:
You can use the same bowl that you used for the base. Mix together the egg, joghurt, both of the sugars and the vanilla with a spoon or spatula.
Add the flour and mix it until there are no more lumps.
Pour the mixture on top of the base and smooth it with a spatula.
4.Sour Cherry layer:
You can also use the same bowl that you used before. Mix together all the sour cherry layer ingredients except flour, with a spoon.
Add the flour if your mixture is too liquidy. If the fruit has too much liquid you can always add more flour or cronstarch.
Spread it over the filling.
5.Sprinkle the ¾ cup crumb even on top of the sour cherry layer.
6.Bake it for 60-75 minutes. Put a cookie sheet under your pan just in case if it runs out. I used canned sour cherries and I baked it for 60 minutes. If you use frozen or fresh fruit it can takes longer time to bake. I recommend to start checking it after 50 minutes. It isn’t going to be totally set but the filling is going to thicken. After baking put the pan on a wire rack and let it cool down for 2 hours or overnight. You can slice it a lot easier when it’s cold so be patient! :)
