Recipe: Nuts and Cranberries Bars

In the pursuit for the perfect Blondies I came across a recipe which I modified a lot.The result is just mind blowing. A special shout out goes to Trader Joe’s for selling ahd preparing the nuts in just the right way.

Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1 stick of butter
1 large egg
1/2 tsp almond extract
pinch of salt
1 cup flour

1/2 cup chopped pecans dry roasted unsalted (Trader Joe’s)
1/2 cup of cranberries (Trader Joe’s)
1/2 cup of Pistachio Nutmeats Dry Roasted & unsalted (Trader Joe’s)
(total of 1 1/2 cups of dried fruits)

And for the last touch – Not part of the nuts mixture:
2/3 honey roasted Almonds (Trader Joe’s)

Method

  • Preheat oven to 350°F. butter pan (I used 7×11″ pyrex pan)
  • Melt butter in a large bowl.
  • Add the sugar.
  • Mix one egg (make sure the mixture id cool before you add the egg)
  • Mix almond extract
  • Mix flour and salt.
  • Mix in the 2 cup of nuts
  • Pour mixture into prepared pan, and use a spoon to even out the dough
  • Cover the dough evenly with the almonds. Use your hands to pat the almonds into the dough.

Bake for 25 minutes (or more, I use convection oven).
The bars are ready when the center is no longer wet.

In previous versions I have used 1/2 cup white chocolate chip, 1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans and 1/2 cup cranberries. It was too sweet for my liking, but others raved…