Jam Crumble Bars

Getting the confidence up, as a home baker, to start writing your own recipes is something that I found very difficult. I have been baking for 28 years and only just a couple years ago started experimenting with doing my own thing. I have found that once you dive off the diving board, though, the process isn’t as daunting as it seems. All that to say that this was one of the very first recipes that I ever wrote. I am proud to say that after playing with it for a bit, it is a huge hit among family and friends, and I am so happy to be sharing it with you!

A fruit crumble is a fantastically delicious dessert in and of itself. I love the juxtaposition of the crispy crumble topping against the gooey fruit bottom. Add a scoop of vanilla icing to that, and you just can’t lose. This recipe takes the best things about a fruit crumble and turns it into a less messy bar form. The crumble portion of the bar uses the usual suspects when it comes to these types of things: flour, oats (for that extra crunch), white sugar, brown sugar (for more depth of flavor), and salt (because I love a salty-sweet dessert).

To tie all of these dry bits together, I use butter. Lot’s of butter. When I first started developing this recipe, I used an entire pound of butter to bind the crumble. Though I love butter, even I’ll admit that it was too much. As I kept testing I took it down to 3 sticks and the results were much better. However, I know that the calorie conscious among us (including myself on a good day) would appreciate my trying to get it down as low as it can go. I whittled it down to 2 1/2 sticks. I promise you that this is the absolute lowest that you can go without turning your bars into a sandy, dry mess.

There’s a real danger in this recipe of not mixing the crumble enough. I have done this on several occasions and ended up with sand. You want to make sure you really mix up that mixture with your hands until you have large-ish crumbles, not tiny pellets. This means that the butter has soaked into all the dry ingredients and will hold them together. You don’t want someone to pick up a bar and have half of the crumble fall of. That would be…tragic.

Half of the crumble becomes the base for these bars. You want to make sure to firmly pack this into place. You need the base to be solid so that people can pick the bars up. There is, to my knowledge, no market for limp bars out in the food world.

On to the fruit. I opted for a mixture of fresh fruit and jam or preserves. This allows you to not have to cook the filling ahead of time, but you still will have the fresh taste of fresh fruit. I like to make sure to read the label on my preserves, however. I have found that though jams and preserves are, by their very nature, long lasting, you’ll find a great deal of the store brands use other preservatives to extend shelf-life even further. This is silly to me, so I try to find jams and preserves that have fruit, sugar and maybe a little extra pectin (a thickener) mixed in.

You may have noticed that the picture at the top of this blog post (originally taken when I shot the video for this recipe) is different than the end result for the rest of the blog post. For that video, I made a purely strawberry bar with strawberry preserves and chopped up fresh strawberries. When I photographed the recipe for this blog, however, I decided to go for mixed berry using blueberries and raspberries against a strawberry jam because “why not?” The results were quite tasty, and it just goes to show you how versatile the recipe is. You can use any combination of fresh fruit and jam that you like, as long as you maintain the correct proportions.

In topping the fruit with the remaining crumble, make sure to only pack ever so lightly. You don’t want to press down or your shoot fruit filling everywhere. This would mess up your bars and probably leave stains. Best just to sprinkle then spread.

After the bars have been baked and are nice and toasty brown, it’s time to let them cool. You CANNOT eat this hot out of the oven. The filling has the temperature of molten sugar. As a person who has been burned by hot sugar a number of times, I can honestly say that I would not wish for it to happen in my mouth. Let them cool for at least a half an hour. If you’re particularly particular (like me) I would actually refrigerate them until they’re solid. This will make cutting them into neat bars an easy and far-less messy task.

I truly hope you enjoy these bars and remember you don’t have to be a chef to make magic in your kitchen!

Joe the Blue Wizard

Yield: 24 Bars

Author: Joe the Blue Wizard

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Jam Crumble Bars

Prep time: 20 MCook time: 1 hourTotal time: 1 H & 20 M

Crispy, Crunchy, Gooey, Fruit-filled....use all the descriptors for these bars. Simply put, they're the bomb-diggity.

Ingredients:

• 3 Cups (375 grams) all-purpose flour 
• 2 ½ Cups (200 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 ½ Cups (300 grams) granulated sugar
• 2/3 Cup (146 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
• 2 Tsp. (12 grams) kosher salt
• 2 1/2 Sticks (275 grams) butter, melted
• 2 Cups (300 grams) fresh strawberries, hulled and chopped
• 1 ½ Cups (350 mL) Strawberry Jam

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350° F.
2. Line a 13x9x2 pan with parchment paper.
3. In a large bowl, mix together flour, oats, sugars and salt.
4. Add melted butter and stir to combine well. The texture of the mixture should be crumbly, but there should be no dry pockets of flour.
5. Pat half of the crumble mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.
6. Sprinkle the strawberries evenly over the top of the crust.
7. Spread the jam evenly over the strawberries and crust.
8. Sprinkle remaining crumble mixture evenly over the top of the strawberries and jam. Do not pat down, leave crumbly.
9. Bake until golden brown and crisp, about 1 hour.
10. Cool in the pan for 30 minutes before removing the bars en masse from the pan.
11. Either let cool overnight at room temperature or 1 hour in the refrigerator before slicing.
12. Note: You can substitute other fruits and jams if you wish using the same proportions. (Raspberry is one of my favorites)

Calories

249

Fat (grams)

6.7

Sat. Fat (grams)

2.2

Carbs (grams)

45.4

Fiber (grams)

1.6

Sugar (grams)

28.6

Protein (grams)

2.6

Sodium (milligrams)

201.9

Nutrition information calculated using myfitnesspal

Created using The Recipes Generator

See me make this recipe on YouTube!