Whenever I think of wineberries, I think of taking my sweet friend Cara back to the creek in the height of summer and filling containers with little red berries. Similar to a raspberry, but smaller and with a decidedly more cloying flavor, wineberries are the perfect summer berry.
Unfortunately, like raspberries, they have a short harvesting window, and only keep so long in the fridge. We’ll often make jam out of them and store it through the winter, only to pull it out on special occasions. One of these special occasions was my lovely mother’s birthday on Monday. She (who is the goddess of cooking, seriously), made a perfect give-me-six-more-pieces kind of cheesecake, and we opened a pint of wineberry jam for on top.
Two days after that, I found the rest of the wineberry jam in the refrigerator. I also had a half a pint of fresh raspberries from the grocery and Elissa’s recipe for Raspberry Oat Crumble Bars weighing heavily on my mind.
Consequently, there is no more wineberry jam in the fridge. It’s currently sitting in crumble form on a cooling rack across from me. And oh-my-goodness is it yummy.
Adapted (barely) from 17 and Baking
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups flour
- 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar (date sugar or muscovado sugar would also be fantastic)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (cut in pieces)
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
- 1/2 cup seedless wineberry jam, strained (or use raspberry jam. or whatever strikes your fancy)
- 1/2 pint fresh raspberries, rinsed
- Topping (optional)
- 1/4 cup old fashioned oats
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix the flour, sugar and salt in an electric mixer (or by hand/food processor), then add butter and mix well. Add milk and mix until dough forms. Knead oats into dough by hand until well-combined.
Put about 3/4 cup of dough off to the side for the crumble. Press remaining dough evenly into a buttered 9×9 baking pan. (you can use parchment. also, I used an 11×7 baking pan and it turned out fine.) Spread jam evenly over the top. Take the raspberries and in a separate small bowl, lightly crush them with your fingers. Spread crushed berries over the jam. Crumble the reserved dough on top. Take extra oats and sugar and sprinkle them over top of the dough.
Bake until golden – about 20-25 minutes and cool completely in the pan on a rack. Use a knife to loosen the sides and cut into bars.
http://blog.farmgirlwrites.com/2012/04/raspberrywineberry-oat-crumble-bars.html
(I lied – I said I was on break, but I think that inspiration and lovely ingredients overcame me and made me blog. Be happy.)
