Cranberry Almond Shortbread Crumb Bars
Leftover cranberry sauce meets crumb bars in these delicious shortbread crumb bars with hints of almond and cloves.
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Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- ⅛ tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract
- ¾ cup cold, unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces
- 4 oz almond paste
- 1 ½ cups leftover homemade cranberry sauce
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and line an 8x8 inch baking dish with parchment paper.
- In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt and cloves.Drizzle with the vanilla and almond extracts, then scatter the butter over the flour mixture.Use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour mixture until moistened and crumbly.
- Reserve 1 cup of the crumbs for the topping, and press the remainder of the crumbs evenly against the bottom of the pan.
- Bake the crust on the center oven rack for 20 minutes.
- Remove the pan from the oven.Grate or crumble the almond paste over the hot crust, then spread the cranberry sauce over the almond paste.Sprinkle the reserved 1 cup of crumbs over the cranberries. (The bars look prettiest if you let some of the cranberries show through the crumbs.)
- Bake the bars on the center oven rack for 35-40 minutes, until the filling is bubbling and the topping is crisp, and a pale golden color.
- Cool the bars completely in the pan before cutting and serving.
- Serve warm, or at room temperature.
Notes
These bars are as good leftover as they are fresh from the oven, and the crust and crumble topping will stay crisp for several days.
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