If you bake anything with strawberries during strawberry season, let it be these brown butter strawberry crumb bars. With layers of brown butter crumble crust and crumb topping, filled with jammy strawberries and finished with a drizzle of sweet icing, they are simply delicious.
Looking for more recipes like this one? You’ll love these peach crumb bars, blueberry crumb bars, rhubarb oatmeal bars and lemon crumb bars.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Spring Flavors. These strawberry crumble bars have such a lovely marriage of flavors going on. There’s browned butter, fresh strawberries, cardamom and orange icing, and they are seriously one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.
High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude. Note that today’s recipe will work at any altitude.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Ingredients
Crust
These strawberry crumb bars begin with a brown butter crust, which is just incredible. Browning butter toasts the milk solids in the butter, deepening the flavor and eliciting a nutty richness that’s just so good. I combined the browned butter with a simple mixture of flour and brown sugar, a pinch of cardamom, a little baking powder, and of course, salt.
The browned butter crumble is pressed into the pan for the bottom crust, and also sprinkled on top of the strawberry filling for the most rich and buttery tasting crumb topping with just the right amount of salt to enhance all the flavors.
Filling
For the filling, I simmered fresh strawberries with lemon juice and some strawberry jam, until thick and syrupy.
Icing
After the brown butter strawberry crumb bars had baked and cooled, I finished them with a drizzle of sweet orange icing. Since the bars themselves don’t have a lot of sugar in them, I really felt like they could use the added sweetness of the icing. A simple powdered sugar glaze made from orange juice, powdered sugar and vanilla was so pretty drizzled over the bars. Instead of orange juice, just use milk or cream for a vanilla icing.
Instructions
Filling
- In a saucepan, combine the 3/4 pound strawberries, jam, lemon juice and vanilla. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Continue to simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently, until thick, syrupy, and reduced to about 1 3/4 cups.
- Set the filling aside to cool while you make the crust. The filling can also be made a day or two in advance, and refrigerated.
Crust and Topping
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line an 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper, or spray the pan with non-stick baking spray.
- In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue to cook the butter, swirling the pan occasionally until fragrant, and nutty brown solids form at the bottom of the pan.
- While the butter is cooking, combine all but 3 tablespoons of the flour with the brown sugar, salt, baking powder and cardamom in a bowl. Pour the browned butter over the flour mixture, scraping up all the brown solids from the pan, too. Use a spoon to stir it together into a soft dough.
- Press 2/3 of the dough evenly in the bottom of the baking pan. Bake on the center oven rack for 20 minutes.
- Add the remaining 3 tablespoons flour to the remaining 1/3 of the dough, and stir together until crumbly – this will be the topping. Set aside.
- After baking the crust for 20 minutes, remove from the oven. Spread the strawberry filling over the hot crust, then sprinkle with the topping. Chop the remaining strawberries, and nestle them on top of the crumble topping.
- Bake the bars for about 35-40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Set aside to cool completely, at least 4-6 hours.
Icing
- Remove the bars from the pan by lifting the paper up and out of the pan. Set on a cutting board, cut into 6-8 rectangular bars, and arrange on a plate.
- To make the icing, add the orange juice, a teaspoon at a time, to the powdered sugar, stirring until the icing is a thick, drizzling consistency. Drizzle over the bars. Immediately sprinkle with a little orange zest and crushed vanilla bean. The icing will set quickly, in about 10 minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do strawberry crumb bars stay fresh?
Fruit filled bars can sometimes turn soggy after a day or so, and the icing will turn sticky and weepy, but not these. In fact, two days later, I thought they were even better than they were freshly baked. The crumble was still buttery and crisp, and the icing still set.
How should I store these bars?
Store the bars in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 day, and in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
What spices can I use instead of cardamom?
If you don’t like cardamom, you can substitute your favorite spice – cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves or allspice, to name a few that would complement these bars.
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Brown Butter Strawberry Crumb Bars
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- 8 inch baking pan
Ingredients
Strawberry Filling
- ¾ lb strawberries, washed, hulled and chopped
- ¾ cup good-quality strawberry jam or preserves
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 5 extra strawberries, to place on top of the crumble
Crust and Topping
- ¾ cup unsalted butter
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled, divided
- ⅓ cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- ¾ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ¾ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp ground cardamom
Icing
- ¾ cup powdered sugar
- 1 ½ tbsp orange juice
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Filling
- In a saucepan, combine the 3/4 pound strawberries, jam, lemon juice and vanilla. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Continue to simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently, until thick, syrupy, and reduced to about 1 3/4 cups.
- Set the filling aside to cool while you make the crust. The filling can also be made a day or two in advance, and refrigerated.
Crust and Topping
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, or just spray the pan with non stick baking spray.
- In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Continue to cook the butter, swirling the pan occasionally until fragrant, and nutty brown solids form at the bottom of the pan.
- While the butter is cooking, combine all but 3 tablespoons of flour with the brown sugar, salt, baking powder and cardamom in a bowl. Pour the browned butter over the flour mixture, scraping up all the brown solids from the pan, too. Use a spoon to stir it together into a soft dough.
- Press 2/3 of the dough evenly in the bottom of the baking pan. Bake on the center oven rack for 20 minutes.
- Add the remaining 3 tablespoons flour to the remaining 1/3 of the dough, and stir together until crumbly – this will be the topping. Set aside.
- After baking the crust for 20 minutes, remove from the oven. Spread the strawberry filling over the hot crust, then sprinkle with the topping. Chop the remaining 5 strawberries, and nestle them on top of the crumble topping.
- Bake the bars for about 35-40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Set aside to cool completely, at least 4-6 hours. You can speed this up by cooling the bars at room temperature for 1 hour, then refrigerating for 1 1/2 hours.
Icing
- Remove the bars from the pan by lifting the paper up and out of the pan. Set on a cutting board, cut into 9 squares, and arrange on a plate.
- To make the icing, whisk together the powdered sugar, orange juice and vanilla extract. Drizzle over the bars. The icing will set quickly, in about 10 minutes.
Can you double this recipe? Also can these be made the night before and left out overnight? Should I cover them?
Yes, that will work fine. After the bars cool, lightly cover them until the next day.