Food For Thought

In my latest perusal of food blogs, I discovered fruit bars that slightly resembled coffee cake. You have no idea how excited I was. I’ve never really made anything that involved a “crumble” before, and was excited to try something new – little did I know that I would be spending 30 minutes mashing cold sticks of butter into flour and sugar with a fork. My wrists have yet to forgive me…perhaps I should lay off the typing for a bit.

I ran into a slight problem when I got back from the store. In my infinite wisdom (and 1.5 hours of sleep), I returned from the store with dried fruits instead of fresh…and cranberries instead of blueberries. Fail. So I tried to make the best of it by reconstituting the dried fruits in hot water for about an hour, and giving up the butter-mashing when my hand went numb. I’m all about compromise. I started thinking about what lemon and cranberry would taste like together. What I came up with was something awfully bitter, and terrible. Oranges always make life better, so we go with oranges!! After all, orange-cranberry is something relatively normal.

Lucky for me, my improvisational skills are better than I thought.

Cranberry-Orange Crumble Squares (Adapted from AllRecipes.com, discovered on SmittenKitchen.com)

1 cup white sugar

3 cups AP flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 sticks of unsalted butter, cold

1 egg

½ cup white sugar

Zest and juice of 1 orange

4 teaspoons cornstarch

¼ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups of dried Cranberries, reconstituted

Preheat oven to 375^oF. Grease a 9”x13” pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, 1 cup of the white sugar, and the baking powder. Mix in the salt and orange zest. Using a fork or a pastry cutter, blend in the butter and the egg until a crumbly mixture is formed. In a medium sized bowl, combine the orange juice, cornstarch, and the other ½ cup of white sugar. Gently mix in the reconstituted cranberries. In the pan, pat down half of the crumble mixture in an even layer. Spoon the fruit mixture over the layer of crust, covering completely. Place the rest of the crumble on the top of the fruit layer covering completely. Bake for 45 minutes in the middle of the oven until golden brown (it may take another 10 minutes after the initial 45). Let cool completely and cut into squares. Makes about 48 1” squares.