Berry Awesome

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I made two new best friends this weekend: raspberry caramel sauce, and brown butter raspberry bars. Luckily for you, I’m pretty good at sharing…

We’ll start with the caramel, aka – Awesome Sauce

Ingredients for raspberry caramel

• 12 oz. fresh (or frozen) raspberries
• 4 tsp water
• 1 c. sugar (regular ol’ white granulated sugar)
• 2 tbsp light corn syrup
• ½ tbsp lemon juice
• ½ cup heavy cream

Instructions

The first thing you need to do, is process the berries.




1. Put them in a small pot over low heat, pour the lemon juice over the top, and let them break down and get all liquidy. Press them through a fine mesh strainer (to get rid of the seeds) and set this juice aside to cool.
2. When the raspberry juice is cool, mix it in with the heavy cream, and set aside until we need it.







3. Put the water, sugar, and corn syrup in a pot, and stir together JUST UNTIL THE SUGAR IS DISSOLVED. You don’t want to be stirring this at all after that.
   Stop touching it, and just let it bubble away until it turns an amber color. (Remember, this goes from brown to black, and you can’t turn back, so you need to be watching it at all times!)
4. When amber color is achieved, turn off the burner, and add the raspberry cream. (Watch out! This bubbles up!)
5. If your heavy cream has created a hard mass in the middle of the pot, don’t cry, just put it back on the burner on low heat just to dissolve it.
6. It will look thin. You’ll think you’ve ruined it, but you haven’t! This caramel sauce will thicken as it cools.

Do you need a minute alone with one another? Here, I’ll leave a spoon and turn my head, and whatever happens, happens. I wont judge you.

So what happens when you have this awesome sauce? You put it on something. Duh.

Like brown butter raspberry crumble bars.

This recipe is a modified version from Cooks Illustrated. My version has a browned butter cookie-esque crust, and a mouth-puckery-tart, fresh raspberry filling. Oh, and I threw some flax seeds on top, cuz those are healthy, right?

Ok, this bar is in no way healthy (don’t you see all of that butter??) so cut your squares small, and share with a friend. Don’t you do yoga? That might be nice too…

Ingredients for crust

• 2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour (12 1/2 oz)
• 2/3 c granulated sugar (4 3/4 oz)
• 1/2 tsp table salt
• 16 tbsp unsalted butter (2 sticks), melted and browned

Ingredients for filling

• 24 oz. fresh or frozen raspberries
• 2 tbsp lemon juice

Ingredients for crumble top

• 1/2 c all purpose flour (2 oz)
• 1/4 c packed brown sugar (1 3/4 ounces), light or dark
• 1/2 c. rolled oats (1 1/2 ounces)
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes at room temp
• small handful of flax seeds
• small handful of sunflower seeds

Instructions

1. Cover 13×9 inch baking pan with foil, and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.
2. For the crust: Combine melted butter, flour, sugar, salt, and mix until it resembles wet sand. Press into bottom of foil-lined baking pan, and bake for 15 min at 375, or until golden brown.
3. For the filling: While the crust is baking, prepare the filling. In a bowl, squeeze lemon juice over berries, and gently mash. That’s it.
4. For the crumble: In a brand-spankin-new-bowl, prepare the crumble. Mix all of the ingredients together, and crumble/crush the butter through the dry ingredients, until you have clumps about the size of peas.
5. When the crust has come out of the oven, layer the raspberries down evenly, and sprinkle the top with the crumble. Bake for 25-30 mins at 375 degrees.
6. Let the bars cool COMPLETELY before attempting to cut. This may take up to 2 hours.

Oh, don’t forget to drizzle that awesome sauce on top!

These keep just fine in the fridge, in a nice covered container, for about a week.

You may have noticed the obscenely large amount of berries I’ve used here. Well, there’s no denying it; I did, in fact, use a surprisingly huge amount of berries. I didn’t want to cut my filling with preserves, because I was aiming for a tart, and pure filling..and I wanted a lot of it. All too often, crumble bars are mostly cookie and crumble, with very little filling. But I wanted to sink my teeth into a nice, thick, berry layer.

If you’d like, go ahead and do a 1/2 and 1/2 type of thing (half berries, half preserves). And, you can use whatever kind of berries you like: blueberries, blackberries, strawberries… and even frozen! Those are always on sale. Hooray for discounts! Just leave ‘em on the counter to thaw before using.

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2 Notes

1. Aimee Hall says:

   April 16, 2011 at 7:54 am

   Mmmm looks tasty! My new favorite blog for sure! Pinching this recipe if thats ok

   Reply
   • admin says:

     April 26, 2011 at 1:06 am

     Aw, thank you! Hope you give this one a try!

     Reply