Last week I was looking in the freezer and realized that we have four bags of frozen blueberries. I have the unfortunate habit of always buying too much extra food, especially since there is only the two of us to feed (The Husband and myself). I could easily go a few weeks without buying any extra groceries. At least if we are ever snowed in we will be ok.
Since I wanted to start using up my frozen blueberries before freezer burn got to them I decided to make this recipe. The recipe comes from here. The original recipe has almonds and blackberries but since The Husband is allergic to nuts and hates blackberries I decided to christen them Blueberry Shortbread Bars.
Instead of creaming together regular sugar and butter this recipe starts off with icing sugar and butter.
All creamed together.
I then added cinnamon and vanilla extract instead of almond extract.
Then the flour in two batches. The original recipe calls for ground almonds but I just substituted an equal amount of flour.
After I added the first batch it was crumbly.
After the second batch it was positively powdery. At this point I was peering doubtfully at the contents of the bowl wondering if the mixture was going to hold together.
After a lot of pressing in the pan it held together with no problems. I just used my fingers but I suppose you could use the bottom of a glass to do this.
I added the blueberries on top. I didn’t bother to thaw them.
The recipe calls for reserving a cup of the shortbread mixture to crumble on top of the fruit. In order to give it some texture I grabbed small handfuls of the mix and compressed them in my hands before crumbling them on top. This way I ended up with bigger pieces and smaller pieces.
After the bars came out of the oven I let them cool down and then sprinkled them with icing sugar to finish them off.
This is the kind of dessert that you make for your elderly aunt who doesn’t like sugary desserts. In my case I made this for The Husband who likes desserts of all degrees of sweetness. The crust is buttery and the topping is fairly thin so it doesn’t overwhelm the shortbread. This is not a super sweet dessert (I’m a fan of super sweet things), so I merely found it ok but The Husband really liked this. This recipe was really simple to make and requires only a few basic ingredients. It is something that can be made on the spot as long as you have some frozen fruit in the fridge. Now I just have to think of something else to do with all the other bags of fruit!
