Blueberry bars

The mind is an interesting thing. Say the right word, and all sorts of images, thoughts, feelings flood into it. Madison Avenue counts on this. They hope that a commercial with a sizzling burger will send us out to buy one at whatever restaurant they're promoting. When my friend Jeni Webber mentioned how she misses her mother's blueberry pie--and her mother--I started salivating and was determined to make two. One for me and one for friends. 

When I got up, however, I saw that there wasn't enough vegetable shortening in the cupboard to make two pies, and I definitely wanted to share whatever I baked.

"Muffins?" No. "Cake?" No. "Bars," I thought. Blueberry bars. 

A quick internet search turned up a recipe on Smitten Kitchen that looked promising, but I didn't have the lemon that the recipe called for. I decided to use spices to bring some high notes to the dish. Coriander came to mind first, but I decided instead to use ginger for those high notes and some cinnamon and nutmeg to complement it. 

Blueberry bars with a wheat, oat, almond crumble

As I was already changing things, I decided to replace some of the wheat flour with whole grain and whole nut: oats and almonds. While they don't rise as well as wheat flour in a muffin, they worked well here, both for the texture and the taste. 

Blueberry bars

1 cup roasted almonds

1 cup oat

1 1/4 cup white flour (approximately)

1  cup granulated sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup cold butter, cut into 1 T pats

1 egg

1/2 cup white sugar

4 tsp cornstarch

1/8 tsp grated nutmeg

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ginger

4 cups blueberries (frozen or fresh, but be gentle with fresh)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan or line it with parchment paper and grease the paper. 

Process the oats and almonds in a food processor till they create a coarse, evenly blended flour. Put them in a large bowl with enough white flour to bring the total volume to 3 cups. I needed 1 1/4 cups of flour when I made it.

In a small bowl, mix the sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mixing them apart from the other ingredients will make it easier for you to break up clumps of baking powder. Add this to the flour mix and blend well. 

Cut in the butter, then cut in the egg, till you have an even crumb mixture. As an alternative to cutting the butter in by hand, you could pulse the butter into the flour in your food processor if its bowl is large enough. Watch the mixture carefully as you do this. You want to pulse it to the point that the butter has been well incorporated, but if you do this too long, the butter may start to melt. If the flour butter mixture starts to clump together again, go no further. Quickly pulse in the egg.

Put half of this mixture in the prepared pan and pat it down lightly to cover the bottom of the pan evenly. 

For the filling, mix the sugar, starch, and spices well in a medium bowl. Then gently fold the berries in to that bowl. Spread the berries onto the layer of crumble base, sprinkling any remaining sugar-spice mix over them evenly. Top with an even layer of the remaining crumb mix. 

Bake the bars till the crumble turns light brown. Check at 40 or 45 minutes, but it took about 10 minutes longer in my oven. Put the pan on a cooling rack. Cut into bars after it has cooled completely.