Strawberry crumble bars – Lazy Cat Kitchen

At last, it’s the time of the year when the strawberry season is on again! I’m too excited so I decided to bake a tray of strawberry crumble bars to celebrate one of my favourite summer fruit.

These strawberry crumble bars are super easy to make, they feature juicy, sweet and a little tangy strawberry layer sandwiched between two layers of simple shortbread crumble. They are dead easy to make, portable (they make a great picnic food) and irresistible.

These strawberry crumble bars make for a fantastic laid-back summer dessert that’s low on effort yet big on flavour. You can make the shortbread mixture by hand if you wish, but you can also make it in a food processor if you don’t want a less fussy option. I pulse flour, salt, baking powder, sugar and spices in a food processor before adding in small cubes of cold butter. I then use the pulse function again to cut the butter into the flour without getting my hands dirty.

To make the strawberry layer all you need to do is to chop your strawberries into same size pieces (so that they cook at the same rate) and then stir some lemon zest and juice, sugar and cornstarch through them. That’s it, no simmering or making jam needed.

The only thing that remains to do is to assemble these strawberry crumble bars, bake and wait until they cool down – that’s by far the hardest step of all!! I hope you’ll enjoy this simple summer recipe.

MORE ABOUT THE INGREDIENTS

VEGAN BUTTER: vegan butter (I used Naturli) is used to make the crumble deliciously short and tender. Use the type that comes in a block, rather than spreadable kind that comes in a tub. You could also use coconut oil – refined type, like this, if you dislike coconut taste or extra virgin coconut taste if you don’t.

SUGAR: I used light brown sugar to sweeten both the crumble and white caster sugar for the filling. You could use any sugar you like including coconut sugar if you are looking for a refined sugar-free option. You can also increase or decrease the amount of sugar to your taste.

ROLLED OATS: Oats and crumble are best friends so I added a generous amount of large (marketed as jumbo rolled oats here in the UK) to the dough and I really recommend it, but if you cannot find them using smaller oats is okay too.

PLAIN FLOUR: I used plain flour to make the base, but a good gluten-free flour mix (containing a high proportion of starches) will work just as well if you want to keep this bake gluten-free.

SPICES: I used a combination of cinnamon and cardamom to flavour these bars. You can use both or either of these or any other spice you enjoy in combination with strawberries. If using cardamom on its own, don’t go too crazy as it’s one of those spices that tends to overpower other flavours easily.

BAKING POWDER: A small amount of baking powder is used to keep the crumble a little lighter, but you can skip it too if you don’t have any or don’t like using it for whatever reason.

SALT: A bit of salt gives this dessert real depth of flavour. I used fine table salt.

STRAWBERRIES I used fresh, ripe strawberries for the filling. The key thing is to chop them up uniformly so that they could at the same rate. I added both lemon zest and juice and a bit of sugar for a nice tangy-sweet filling. If your strawberries are not very sweet you may want to dial down the lemon or add more sugar for balance.

VANILLA: A dash of vanilla never goes wrong in baking so I added some vanilla extract to the strawberry filling.

LEMON: I used zest of a small lemon and a dash of lemon juice to bring out strawberries’ sour notes.

HOW TO MAKE IT?

1) MAKE THE SHORTBREAD

Cut cold butter into small cubes and pit it into the freezer for 10 or so minutes. Combine flour, sugar, baking power, salt and spices in the food processor’s bowl – hold the oats for now. Pulse a few times to combine. Next add cold cubes of butter and use the pulse function again to cut cold butter into flour. Once the mixture is moistened enough to clump in your palm when squeezed, transfer the mixture into a bowl and stir jumbo oats through. The reason I do that is that I want to keep my oats whole and food processor’s blade would chop them up if I added them in at the same time as the flour.

Scatter two thirds of the mixture at the bottom of a 20 cm (8″) square baking tray and press it into the tray well. Using a flat bottomed glass helps. Bake for 15 minutes.

2) PREP THE STRAWS

Chop your strawberries into small dice but be sure to keep the dice fairly uniform so that the filling cooks at the same rate. Once your base is out of the oven and you are ready to assemble the bars, season chopped starwberries with lemon juice and zest and stir sugar and corn starch through them then immediately spread this mixture on top of the strawberry crumble bars base.

3) LAYER

Once your strawberry layer is down, top it with the rest of the crumble mixture and some flaked almonds for another texture.

4) BAKE

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the top of these crumble bars is golden brown and the strawberry layer is thickened and bubbling away at the edges. Remove from the oven and cool down completely before cutting, in fact it is best to keep these in the fridge overnight for neater looking slices.