FRUIT BARS

A few weeks ago I shared Friend Paula's recipe for fruit swirl coffee cake. It was soooooo good. Love anything with cherry pie filling. I wanted to make something for the boys next door. (My husband kept reminding me I hadn't made anything for them in over a week.) 

As usual I went searching through the current cookbooks  that happened to be around my chair. I picked up Miriam Miller's Authentic Amish Cooking The Wooden Spoon Cookbook and found this recipe for fruit bars. 

A couple of things interested me about the recipe. One it only called for 1 cup of sugar and it used a cherry or pineapple pie filling. I don't think I have ever seen pineapple pie filling so I will have to look for it when I am in grocery stores. At the time I didn't think about Paula's recipe. When I did, I compared the two and saw that Miriam's recipe was quite a bit different. 

I mainly followed Miriam's recipe. When I went to the pantry, I realized I didn't have a cherry pie filling. I did have a strawberry one and a raspberry one. I decided to use the strawberry one. The only other difference was I used 1/2 cup of truvia stevia/sugar blend for the cup of sugar. I considered using 1 cup stevia since the strawberry pie filling would be sweet enough, but didn't.

FRUIT BARS

2       sticks margarine (1/2 lb) (I used butter.)
1        cup sugar (I used 1/2 cup stevia/sugar blend)
2       eggs
1        teaspoon vanilla
2       cups flour
1        cup nuts (optional) (I used chopped walnuts)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray or grease a 9 x 13 - inch pan.

Beat margarine and sugar

til smooth. (I heated my butter for 30 seconds in the microwave first to soften it a little.)

Add eggs and

beat again.

Add vanilla and

beat again.

Add flour and nuts and mix until

well blended.

Spread about 2/3 of the dough in the pan. (Anytime I have to do this I find it easier to do if I drop spoonfuls around the bottom of the pan and

then spread the blobs out to cover the pan. I don't drop all of it, but then fill in the areas where I need dough to finish covering the pan.)

Spread the pie filling over the dough. (I cut up some of the strawberries so I would have a good cover of the filling.)

Drop the remaining 1/3 of the dough over the pie filling 

in small blobs scattered around.

Bake 40 to 45 minutes.

Cool pan on wire rack.

Sprinkle powdered sugar over top after baking. (I let it cool for about 5 minutes before I did this - wasn't sure since Miriam wasn't more specific. Paula prepared a glaze with powdered sugar, milk, and flavoring and drizzled over her cake. I considered doing this but decided to just sift a little powdered sugar over the bars and thereby use less sugar.)

Cut in bars to serve.

The smaller ones I saved for us. Took the rest to the boys. Wyatt was happy to see them.