Recipe: Cherry Pie Bars

Image found here

My mom and I wanted to bake something, and we were thinking about what ingredients we already had at home. We had some canned pie filling, but no pie crust. So I Googled recipes that used pie filling in anything other than pie. And I found this recipe from Cooking Classy.

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1.75 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1.5 cans (21 oz) cherry pie filling

Glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 2.5-3 tbsp half-and-half

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 13x9-inch baking dish (for thinner bars, use a 15x10-inch baking dish).
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, use a mixer to whip together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Mix in eggs one at a time, then blend in vanilla and almond extracts. With the mixer set on low speed, slowly add in the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Reserve and set aside 1.5 cups of the batter, then spread the remaining batter evenly into the prepared baking dish.
4. Top with cherry pie filling, spreading it into an even layer. Dollop small spoonfuls of the remaining batter evenly over the top.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30-37 minutes (near lesser time for 15x10 and greater time for 13x9). Remove from oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack. 
6. For the glaze: In a small mixing bowl, whisk together all glaze ingredients, adding enough half-and-half to reach your desired consistency. Pour into a resealable bag, seal bag and cut a small tip from one corner, then drizzle over top of the cooled bars. Allow the glaze to set (to set it quicker, chill in the freezer), then cut into squares.

I will admit that I took the liberty to type up the directions to allow for more clarity, including adding articles to nouns. But I did leave #5 the same, because I thought those directions were a bit obvious (although perhaps not for inexperienced bakers, like I wrote about in my last blog post!).

Okay, so it doesn't look quite like the original...

I used a large can of raspberry filling instead of cherry, since that's what we had on hand. And my mom didn't want to use her Teflon-coated 13x9-inch pan in fear of us ripping the Teflon while cutting the squares. So we used a 9x9-inch pan, meaning these squares were THICC. (Also, it needed to cook longer [as expected due to the thickness], so it was in the oven for 42 minutes.) In the end we didn't even cut them into squares: we just ladled ourselves a piece! I wouldn't recommend using the smaller pan like I did, but I'm glad they still tasted good; the ratio of dough fruit filling was just a little off.

And just like my last blog post, I didn't bother to make the glaze/icing. This dessert already has so much sugar; it doesn't need more! Plus, it tastes delicious just as it is.