“It’s ok to make mistakes. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes,” the guest speaker at my son’s homeschool group said to his class of kindergarteners. Then my son chimed in, “Yeah! My mommy makes a lot of mistakes!”
We all had a good laugh about it, and thankfully he was only referring to how I messed up laminating some papers earlier in the day! Whew.
When it comes to baking, mistakes are frustrating. I don’t want to waste good food, but I also don’t want to eat food that isn’t very tasty. Recently I made some jam that didn’t turn out as expected. I’m not exactly sure what happened because I did follow the instructions exactly on the sure-jell packaging. Perhaps the difference was that I’m used to the low sugar version of sure-jell and this version was much more sugary than what I’m used to. At any rate, I didn’t want to waste all the precious berries I had used in the jam, so I began to think of ways to use it in other recipes.
After some searching and recipe testing, I landed on these delicious raspberry almond bars. They use almond flour, which packs in the protein and the crust is just lightly sweetened, balancing out the sweetness of the jam on top.
Like many things I bake, these triple berry almond bars didn’t last long in our kitchen. Before long, I made a double batch of them and my husband took one batch to work to share, and then I made another batch. Needless to say, this is a recipe we’ll be keeping on hand!
I made it with a triple berry jam, but you could make it with any berry jam.
PrintTriple Berry Jam Bars
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter (2 sticks) at room temperature
- 1 egg, slightly beaten
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3/4 cups raspberry preserves
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8×8 pan with parchment paper.
- Combine flour, almond flour, sugar, oats, and salt in a food processor. Pulse until the oats are chopped up and the mixture is a consistent texture. Cut butter into chunks and add to the flour mixture in the food processor. Once the butter is evenly distributed, add the beaten egg and vanilla extract. Pulse in food processor until the mixture comes together as dough that looks like coarse crumbs. Remove 2 cups of dough (about half) and set aside. Press remaining dough into the bottom of the prepared pan. Spread the jam on top, avoiding the very edge of dough. Take remaining dough and crumble on top of preserves in an even layer.
- Bake for at 350 for 40-50 minutes until golden brown on top. Cool completely before cutting into squares (If you can wait!)