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Confession: I actually made this raspberry crumb bars back in April because I was trying to get ahead of the Baked Sunday Mornings blogging schedule. I didn’t really love them, and I meant to find time to try making them one more time, because the failure had to be on my end. How could a BAKED recipe for raspberry crumb bars possibly be flavorless and boring? Sadly, I didn’t manage a redo, so for now, we’ll have to talk about my experience with this bars as I made them in April, and I promise an update when I remake them.
Let’s start with what could have gone wrong?
-I did use mixed berries (raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries; frozen from Trader Joe’s), rather than only raspberries. That’s unlikely to have caused a disaster….but since my filling was flavorless, it seems like it could be a contributing factor.
-I completely spaced and forgot to add the oats before working the butter into the crust, so I might have overworked my crust.
-I was in a rush, and the recipe didn’t specify (at least when I read it from the book, but it does on BSM, so maybe I just missed it), so I added the berry filling on top of the par-baked crust while it was still quite warm from the oven. Usually recipes specifically state not to do this, and I felt a lot of concern about it, but I thought I was following the recipe as written. Did I mention, I was in a hurry? I probably misread and I don’t have the book in front of me right now to corroborate. Given how tough my crust was, I wonder if this choice caused the toughness and if my crust would have been delicious if I’d let it cool completely between bakes.
-I had to bake my crust for 16 minutes before it was golden brown, which was a little longer than the recipe suggests (12-15 minutes)
-I also baked the bars longer than specified by the recipe because after 35-40 minutes, the filling wasn't bubbling yet. Mine finally started bubbling at about 50 minutes.
My oven is very obviously not working at top capacity and it very clearly has hot spots, so it's not clear to me whether this extra baking time is a feature of my oven or related to the recipe itself.
I wanted to love these, but I really didn't, and when I brought them into work for a bake-off, they were the last thing left. The crust was tough and difficult to cut, and the filling was unexciting. I'll try making these one more time, because they should be great, and I'll eventually edit accordingly.
In the meantime, head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what other bakers thought of these.
