Sweet Strawberry Crumb Bars

Here I am again talking about the weather... but yes! Finally spring decided to show her face a little bit around here! Yay!!! I'm sooo happy! Wanting to do things, go places, getting the garden going, playing outside... all kinds of fun things! 

I got these great looking strawberries, no so great tasting though... they smelled great at the store, looked perfect, but when it came to taste, they were not the sweetest... :( So here I went looking  for a recipe that I had been willing to make, but these were blueberry bars, and I had strawberries, so I figured they will work just fine, and I was not disappointed at all! Adding lemon and sugar to these not so sweet strawberries did the trick! 

Last Thursday was such a beautiful day that I decided to go ahead and make them, but it was so sunny and bright that we decided to go out first, play for a while, make some bubbles, pick flowers, ladybugs...

BTW this cute little one got named "Fergie" by my best pal here holding her...

... and then we went to get the fresh eggs to make this delicious buttery strawberry crumb bars.

Now, I adapted this recipe from www.allrecipes.com blueberry crumb bars, I made a couple of changes. They called for shortening in their recipe, which I really don't like to use that much... I think that butter is so much better for certain recipes. 

Also, I still had some Dandy Meyer Lemon left (which by the way I'm including in almost everything I cook these days... :) so I added the zest and juice of one whole Meyer Lemon, and OMG, did they add flavor... not only my whole kitchen smelled insane while these were baking, but the whole house... it completely made the house smell like spring!

Strawberry Meyer Lemon Crumb Bars

For the dough:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup cold unsalted butter (2 sticks)

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

Zest of one Meyer Lemon

In a medium bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients and with a fork or pastry cutter blend in the butter and egg. Keep in mind that the dough will be crumbly. Pat half of the dough into the prepared pan (I used a Pyrex 9 x 11 glass pan, but as you can see in the first pic I reserved a little amount to make one little one to take pretty pictures in this cute little green and white polka dot pan. If you simply want to do one pan, use a 9 x 13 baking pan)

Strawberry Filling:

Juice of one Meyer Lemon

4 cups of cut up strawberries 

1/2 cup white sugar

4 teaspoons cornstarch

In another bowl, stir the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently fold the strawberries, sprinkle this mixture evenly over the crust and then, crumble remaining dough over the strawberry layer.

Bake in preheated oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes depending on the oven, or until top is slightly golden brown. 

If you can wait, cool completely before cutting into squares... I couldn't... LOL! After playing outside for a while we devoured these with a nice glass of cold milk, berry perfection on a plate! 

This recipe makes about 36 small rectangles. Next day I brought leftover to co-workers tied with cute red raffia and they  loved them! It was an awesome surprise they said. ;)

Enjoy!