Oatmeal and Fruit Crumble Bars
Oatmeal has been always been a favorite of mine, but not just as a hot breakfast. One of my favorite cookie recipes is my Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, another one of my favorite treats are these Oatmeal and Fruit Crumble Bars. I’ve been making them for a few years and just recently changed up the recipe to incorporate whole wheat flour and a stevia blend instead of sugar, I also used sugar free preserves. With all of these changes, I was expecting for these familiar bars to taste nothing like I was used to. But I was wrong, they were just as delicious and I had always remembered!
Ingredients:
- 2 c whole wheat flour
- 1/2 c granulated sugar (I used 1/4 c of Truvia Baking Blend)
- 1/2 c brown sugar
- 1 c rolled oats
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 sticks butter, softened
- 1 egg
- 1 c fruit preserves (I used sugar free raspberry)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan with cooking spray.
Mix flour, sugars, oats and salt in a large bowl. Then add in the butter and egg. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl often to make sure your ingredients are mixing properly. Continue to stir until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Measure 2 cups of the mixture and set aside.
Press the remaining crumb mixture onto the bottom the baking dish.
Spread the preserves over the pressed crumb mixture almost but not quite to the edge of the dish, leave about 1/4 of an inch empty all the way around.
Take the 2 cups of crumb mixture that was set aside and sprinkle it evenly over the preserves.
Bake 40 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars.
The amount of bars this recipe yields depends on how big you want them. I usually cut them into 9 bars, but then end up cutting those in half so that I can grab one piece for a quick snack. I hope that you like them as much as we do!
