Strawberry Shortcake Bars

My husband was on another outdoor adventure during the latter part of last week, which put me in the kitchen working on a little more freezer cooking for Marc's family.

The week started off with cooking a ham. Marc's Easter pork roast was very tasty, but I was missing my ham leftovers, so I did this crockpot version of Honey Baked Ham. Yes, the ham was too tall for the crockpot, but fortunately they give you handy-dandy tips in the recipe about how to work around that.

The ham made an appearance in the freezer cooking I did, and in a couple of dinners for my husband and I before he went out of town. You can see I had several things going on the days this happened. The requirement this time was that everything had to be non-dairy except for baked goods. All the babies in Marc and Rachelle's family seem to get really spitty about this time in their little lives, and if Rachelle cuts out dairy it seems to be somewhat better. That switch has been flipped with Hazel, so I needed to be more careful in my selections to give them.

I made this split pea soup in the instant pot one day and froze it in individual portions in these Souper Cubes.

The logic behind this was that the soup wasn't something Marc's boys would enjoy eating, but both he and his wife like it, so I froze it this way so they could heat up individual servings for lunch and wouldn't have to thaw a whole single family-sized freezer bag of soup. At least, that's the plan. Those silicone freezer tray things come in all kinds of different sizes. This was the first time I'd used them and it was pretty darn slick.

 I'm sure by now you're all wondering how the pineapple canning session went.

The answer is that it went, and I learned a lot. I learned that there's a fine line between trying to use the corer tool on a just barely ripe pineapple and an over-ripe pineapple, and it affects the way the fruit cans. The very ripe pineapples tended to get a little squishy, were much harder to cut into nice looking chunks, and as such didn't look as nice in the jars, so I'd err on the side of just barely ripe were I do to this again. I also learned that if I had a pineapple tree growing in my backyard, and there was no way for me to buy it at the store.....I'd know how to bottle it. I'm just not sure it's worth the labor involved to do it for the heck of a good sale. In future, I'll probably just buy a couple on sale and enjoy them fresh. But hey, I can say I've canned pineapple.

This brings us to this week's recipe, which I found here. I had strawberries in the fridge that needed to be used up, and after several days of freezer cooking I was looking for something that would incorporate them, come together fairly easily, and was non-dairy for my daughter-in-law. While this recipe had more steps than I wanted to fulfill the "comes together easily" requirement, it's definitely a seasonal winner, and it's just so pretty. 

Strawberry Shortcake Bars

Crust:

• 1 ¼ cups flour
• 1 cup quick oatmeal
• ½ cup lightly packed brown sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 14 tablespoons cold salted butter, cut into cubes

Filling:

• 1 ½ cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 8 tablespoons salted butter, melted
• 1 large egg

Strawberry Topping:

• 2 pounds diced fresh strawberries
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS 

Preheat the oven to 350° and spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray.

For the crust, in a large bowl combine the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, salt and nutmeg. Toss in the cubed butter and cut it into the dry mixture using a pastry blender or two knives or just your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Measure out 1 cup of the mixture and set it aside for later.  Press the rest of the crust into the bottom of the prepared pan and bake for 8 minutes.

 

While the crust bakes, make the filling by whisking together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in the butter and egg. Stir with a rubber spatula until smooth and combined – it will be pretty thick. Crumble this mixture over the warm crust and pat into a relatively even layer (doesn’t have to be perfect).

 

In a medium bowl, toss the strawberries with the sugar, cornstarch, nutmeg and vanilla. Spread evenly over the filling and sprinkle the reserved crust mixture over the top. Bake the bars for 40-45 minutes until they are just lightly golden around the edges and the center is no longer soft/jiggly. Cool completely in the pan.

Cut into bars and serve. Store the bars in the refrigerator if not serving within an hour or two. Makes a 9x13 pan, 15-24 bars, depending on how big you cut them.

 

Comments

[Elisa Allan]

You are amazing!!!! Well done.

[AP Man]

Very cool soup bricks, Ma. We should build something, and then eat it.