Cranberries From The Tundra

As mentioned earlier, I've been picking a lot of cranberries/lingonberries (both names are used for the same berry) recently, freezing my fingers and toes in the process. They've shown up in my oatmeal, in crisps, in breads, in sauces, and I just keep picking more to restock my supply. This all comes in handy for this month's Garden Cook Event hosted by Paulchen's Foodblog for which the theme is cranberries.

I decided to add cranberries to my lemon bar recipe because 1) I love lemon and cranberry together and 2) it uses four eggs and I was, once again, the happy recipient of 18 locally-laid eggs the other day. Three dozen eggs gifted in 10 days means finding a lot of ways to use eggs!

This was mostly successful, but I really needed to have been bolder about how many cranberries I added. They were a little thin on the ground, as you can see.


The bars were delicious, though, so here's the recipe. In the future, I think I'd use about a cup and a half of cranberries, or maybe even a cup and three-quarters.

Lemon-Cranberry Bars

Crust:

1 cup butter, softened and creamed
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon each of dehydrated lemon and lime juice

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix the ingredients well and pat into a 9 x 11 inch brownie pan. Bake for 20 minutes, until just starting to brown. Remove from oven.

Filling:

4 eggs, beaten
5 TBS flour
2 cups sugar
juice and zest of one large lemon
pinch of salt
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries (or more)

Combine the first five ingredients and mix well. Pour over crust and sprinkle evenly with the cranberries. Bake 25 minutes. Remove from oven, dust with powdered sugar, and let cool completely before cutting into squares.