Monday, July 13, 2009

You'll Pry My 8x8 Pyrex Pan From My Cold Dead Hands Apricot Bars

"Hey everybody, look! Mama made bars!




I know, I know! Someone's going to stage an intervention to confront my bars addiction. I don't even like bar cookies/cakes, but they are so fun to make, I can't stop myself. Thankfully, other people really seem to like them.


You can see an earlier apricot bar recipe HERE, though that involved dried apricots-probably better for wintertime baking.

These were really simple to make, and fast. I didn't notice that the recipe had the flour divided, and I ended up using 1 1/3 cups in the base-but that seemed to work well, so I'll post it as I made it.


The recipe is adapted from The New York Times Heritage Cookbook, edited by, Jean Hewitt. I love this gigantic old cookbook and have found the recipes to be well-tested.

You Will Need:

1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup all purpose flour (in addition to flour already used above)
1 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I omitted these)
1 cup thick apricot puree made by putting skinned, fresh apricots through a blender.
Confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8x8 inch pan.

Mix together the flour and sugar. Cut in the butter until you have fine crumbs. Press into pan. Bake 15 minutes or until lightly browned. While base bakes, prepare the topping.

Sift together 1/3 cup flour, baking powder and salt. Beat brown sugar into the eggs and then stir into the flour mixture. Add the vanilla, walnuts and apricot puree. Spread over baked layer. Bake 30 minutes or until set. Cool in pan. Chill and dust with confectioner's sugar.

No comments: