raspberry nut shortbread bars

Due to incredibly poor planning, I had to go to the local warehouse store and the grocery store on Monday, 2 days before Christmas Eve. This is not something I normally aim to do because it seems that on Christmas week, food stores are suddenly filled with the shopping-challenged -- there are the people who have never been in a grocery store ("oh my goodness, Herb, look at all the different salad dressings!"), those who don't know basic shopping carriage etiquette (they are not meant for plowing into fellow shoppers), and my favorite, the folks who believe that if I am looking at a shelf of food, this means that they should then step in between me and the shelf to consider the choices for themselves.

So after I returned home from nightmare that was food shopping on Monday, my very dear sister-in-law called me to request something desserty for Christmas dinner. I was torn between steeling myself to go back out into the throng (it IS Christmas, after all) or being practical (and hopefully not too Scroogish) and combing my cookbooks and the Internet until I found something festive I could make with what I had at home. To be fair, my kitchen is not exactly spartan -- I had about 25 pounds of assorted types of flour, 10 pounds of different kinds of sugars, 5 pounds of different types of baking chocolate, all sorts of nuts and so on. In the end, I opted to make these raspberry shortbread bars, which I found in a community cookbook. I knew my SIL had made fudge and I figured that the shortbread would counterbalance the chocolate nicely (and to be honest, it's been a chocolate-filled month for me, and (insert shock and horror here) I was getting pretty sick of all things chocolate.


Raspberry Nut Shortbread Bars

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup raspberry jam
2 eggs
1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped nuts (original recipe calls for walnuts, but I used hazelnuts)

To prepare the shortbread base, prepare the 1 1/4 cup of flour and 1/2 cup sugar in a bowl; cut in butter until the mixture is resembles fine bread crumbs. Press the mixture firmly into bottom of a lightly greased 9" square baking pan to make an even layer (I used the bottom of a glass to pack it down tightly). Bake for 350 degrees for 20 minutes or just until the edges have become lightly browned. Remove pan from oven and spread the raspberry jam over the shortbread. Beat eggs with brown sugar and vanilla until well blended. Mix the 2 tablespoons of flour with the salt and baking soda and it all to the egg/brown sugar/vanilla. Add nuts. Spoon the mixture over the jam and spread lightly to the edges. Return pan to oven and bake for 25 minutes longer or until the top is set. Cool in pan and then cut into bars. Makes 24 bars.

The sprinkled confectioners' sugar is to camoflage the overbrowning (I used half dark brown sugar when I ran out of light brown sugar halfway through measuring).

On a side note: I am so done with sweets. Thank goodness Christmas is here so I can go back to bread baking! Merry Christmas to all!