Description
If you love fruit crisps with crumbly oat topping, you’ll love these blackberry pie bars. They feature a delicious sweet/tart homemade blackberry filling sandwiched between two layers of oat crumble crust.
Ingredients
FOR THE BLACKBERRY FILLING
20 ounces blackberries or mixed berries
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons corn starch
FOR THE OAT CRUMBLE CRUST
1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 large egg, room temp
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
FOR THE BLACKBERRY FILLING
- Place the blackberries, sugar, water, lemon zest and corn starch in a medium pan and bring to a simmer.
- Mash the berries with a spatula as they cook to help them break down.
- Stir frequently and continue to cook until the mixture has thickened in texture and coats the back of a wooden spoon/spatula.
- Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.
FOR THE OAT CRUMBLE CRUST
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line an 8×8 glass pan with parchment paper.
- In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a handheld mixer), cream together butter and sugars for 2 minutes on medium high heat, until lightened in color and fluffy.
- Reduce mixer speed and add egg and vanilla. Scrape down sides of bowl if needed.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
- Keeping mixer on low speed, mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients.
- Place half of batter into prepared pan and spread to edges. Pre-bake bottom crust for about 15 minutes until it’s set and let cool for a few minutes.
- Spoon blackberry filling over pre-baked crust. Crumble the remaining dough over the top.
- Spoon blackberry filling over cooled crust and crumble reserved dough over filling.
- Bake bars for another 30 minutes, or until topping is golden brown and filling is bubbling.
- Cool completely before lifting parchment out of the pan and cutting. To make cutting even easier, refrigerate the cooled bars before cutting.
- Store bars in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Notes
- Feel free to use a mix of whatever berries you have on hand.
These blackberry pie bars are delicious eaten cold out of the fridge or warmed up with vanilla ice cream!