March 13, 2011 American Recipes

Sake Strawberry-Apple Bars

These Sake Strawberry-Apple Bars are just delicious! An easy recipe for bars filled with a sweet and juicy strawberry-apple filling and topped with a crunchy crumble.

Juicy strawberries with sweet apples get even better with a little sake. A moist and juicy filling topped with a salty pretzel-oat crust makes it difficult to eat just one bar!

I know I’ve mentioned that apple desserts are my favorite kind of desserts; a very close tie with Nutella desserts

I remember eating apple crumbles when I was little. My little brother and I would return from a long day at school to the comforting smells of apple and cinnamon baking. My mom would make crumbles and bars as often as she would make us cookies.

There wouldn’t be any lectures about not making a mess while we ate a crumble because a crumble is well, a crumbly affair to say the least. Her crumbles and bars were not made with sake...that's my crazy idea!

When I was studying at University, I was surrounded by students from all over the world. One very good friend of mine was Masaki Yoshida from Japan. We met each other in one of our International Business classes. All Masaki wanted to be was American. He loved basketball, rap music, and drove a Nissan 300 ZX. Masaki was a part of our group of friends that was mostly students from South America and Italy.

This is a crumble that is even more appealing because of the shortbread crust and the salty pretzel topping. There are oats mixed in with the butter and pretzel…it is slightly healthy. I find sake at Publix in the nice sushi section.

This is a crumble that is even more appealing because of the shortbread crust and the salty pretzel topping. There are oats mixed in with the butter and pretzel…it is slightly healthy.

Sake is smooth baked into the apples and strawberries. I recommend you try it. If you don’t have sake, you could use lemon or orange juice.

I love to add strawberry or apricot jam to my fruit fillings for pies or crumbles. If you don’t have strawberry jam, you can use any other flavored jam. This is very similar to my Winter Mini Apple Cranberry Crumble recipe.

What ingredients are in these easy to make bars?

Crust:

unsalted butter, softened
sugar
all-purpose flour
sea salt

Filling:

granny smith apples (or your favorite baking apples)peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2” pieces
strawberries
lemon
cinnamon
ground ginger
sea salt
strawberry jam
cornstarch
sake (or orange juice)

Crumb Topping:

salted pretzels
all-purpose flour
light brown sugar
granulated sugar
quick cooking oats
butter

How to make these crumble bars

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 8x8 inch baking pan. In a medium sized bowl, add the apple pieces, cinnamon, ground ginger, and lemon juice. Let it sit while you prepare the crust. In a medium bowl, beat the butter and the sugar until fluffy. Beat in the flour until a soft dough is formed. Remove the dough and place it into your prepared pan. Press firmly onto the bottom and sides of the pan.

Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. You will have to refrain from eating this sugar cookie crust! Yum!

While the crust is baking, prepare the apple-strawberry mixture. In a medium sauce pan, sauté the apples in medium-low heat for about 3 minutes (until they lose their crispiness). Add the strawberries and the strawberry jam. Add in the sake combined with the 2 teaspoons of cornstarch.

Let it thicken and set the pan aside to cool while you prepare the crumb topping.

Crumb Topping:
In a medium bowl, stir together the crushed pretzels, oats, flour, both sugars, and oats. With a pastry cutter (or your fingers) cut in the butter pieces until the mixture has a crumbly mixture with the crumbs the size of blueberries.

After the filling cools, spread evenly on top of the crust.

Sprinkle the crumb mixture evenly over the apple-strawberry filling.

Bake about 35-40 minutes or until the the topping is golden brown. Cool the bars completely in the pan on top of the rack, then place them in the refrigerator to chill before cutting.

You can store the bars in an airtight container in the refrigerator if you don’t gobble them all up as soon as you bake them.

Some other desserts to try:

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