CRANBERRY SHORTBREAD BARS

This week, I have been trying out some new "goodie" recipes with the holidays in mind; I like to add a few new items to my standard cookie boxes every year. Today I made some cranberry shortbread bars that I found in a holiday issue of Fine Cooking and they are definitely going to make the "big list". The bars have an ultra-buttery shortbread crust topped with cooked cranberries and then a shortbread-type streusel topping. They are baked in a 9 x 13 pan that is lined with foil for easy removal. The bars are very sweet, buttery, tender and cut nicely...perfect for gift giving.

Wash and sort a 12 ounce bag of fresh cranberries. Put them in a heavy saucepan with ¼ cup of water and one cup of white sugar. Bring to a boil over high heat. After it comes to a boil, reduce the heat to medium high and boil until the sauce is like a thick syrup - 5 to 8 minutes (mine took 6 minutes). Set aside to cool (it will thicken even more as it cools).

SHORTBREAD CRUST

21 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled to room temp.

This seems like a lot of butter, but it makes an upper and lower crust

¾ cup of white sugar

2 large egg yolks

3 cups + 3 tablespoons all purpose flour

No need to use an electric mixer, I did it all with a wooden spoon. Mix the sugar into the melted butter and whisk in the egg yolks. Stir in the flour to make a very stiff dough. Remove two cups of this dough and pat evenly into a foil lined 9 x 13 pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork and refrigerate for 30 minutes (or put in freezer for 7 minutes). Set the rest of the dough aside.
With the remaining dough, run a fork back and forth in the dough to loosen it up into crumbles Add ¼ cup of white sugar to these crumbles and work the fork back and for a little more to break up any large clumps. Do not chill these crumbles.

Bake the 9 x 13 chilled pan of dough, on the middle rack of your oven, for 20 minutes at 325. After 20 minutes, the dough will still be very pale in color and will not have any golden color on the edges. Remove it from the oven and spread the cooled cranberry filling evenly over it.

Spread the loose crumbles over the cranberry filling

Bake on the TOP rack of a 350 oven for 25 minutes (mine took 32 minutes). Watch the crumbles towards the end of the baking time. You want to see a little golden color on the top of the crumbles, like this:

Cool baked bars on a wire rack for at least an hour or until completely firm. You can speed set them in the fridge. When the bottom of the pan is completely cool, lift the bars out of the pan by pulling on the flap ends of the foil. Cut into 2" bars. These will keep at room temperature for a week.

NOTE: The butter measurement of 21 tablespoons is not a typing error

NOTE: Bake the bars in a metal 9 x 13 pan so they don't over bake. Line it with foil and leave the ends of the foil a little long, so you can use them as handles to lift the cooled bars out of the pan.
NOTE: Pay attention to baking temperatures. The first crust pre-bake is on the middle rack at 325. The final bake is on the TOP rack at 350. The recipe says it is baked on the top rack so that the bottom of the crust doesn't get too dark.