Browned Butter Cherry Bars
I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the beautiful produce this summer. Well, that might not be an accurate statement… We’ve been eating amazingly this summer. But I haven’t been baking very much. When I found a bag of cherries in my cart at the store, I knew I’d be baking with them.
Hubby snacked on a quite a few of the cherries, but he didn’t get his way through all of them before I whipped up these Browned Butter Cherry Bars. As with anything you put browned butter in, these bars had a great caramely nuttiness from the browned butter.
The cookie crust on these bars is buttery and crisp. the cherries really shine through their ripeness. I went ahead and cut them into smaller rectangles as opposed to regular sized squares. I honestly couldn’t stop snacking on these little bars.
Three Years Ago: Family Favorites Cookbook
Four Years Ago: Banana Nut Bread Mini Muffins and Breakfast Pizza
Five Years Ago: Blueberry Lemon Basil Cupcakes
Browned Butter Cherry Bars
Yield: 16 bars
Ingredients:
For the Crust
7 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 Tbsp flour
Pinch of salt
For the Filling
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, diced
1 pound sweet cherries
Directions:
For the Crust
Preheat over to 375°F. Cut two 12-inch lengths of parchment paper and trim each to fit the 8-inch width of an 8×8-inch square baking pan. Press it into the bottom and sides of your pan in one direction, then use the second sheet to line the rest of the pan, perpendicular to the first sheet. (It should look like this.) Congratulations! You’ve just faked a square tart pan.
Using rubber spatula or fork, mix melted butter, sugar, and vanilla in medium bowl, or if you’re Deb, in the bottom of the small saucepan you used to melt the butter. Add flour and salt and stir until incorporated. Transfer dough to your prepared pan, and use your fingertips to press the dough evenly across the bottom of the pan. Bake the crust until golden, about 18 minutes (it will puff slightly while baking). Transfer crust to rack and cool in pan. Maintain oven temperature.
Make the Filling
Cook butter in heavy small saucepan (a lighter-colored one will make it easier to see the color changing, which happens quickly) over medium heat until deep nutty brown (do not burn), stirring often and watching carefully, about six minutes. Immediately pour browned butter into glass measuring cup to cool slightly.
Whisk sugar, eggs, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Add flour and vanilla and whisk until smooth. Gradually whisk browned butter into sugar-egg mixture; whisk until well blended.
Arrange pitted cherries, or the berries of your choice, in bottom of cooled crust. Carefully pour browned butter mixture evenly over the fruit. Bake bars until filling is puffed and golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes (though, of course, this took less time in my hyperactive oven so please watch your baking times carefully). Cool bars completely in pan on rack.
Use the parchment paper overhang to carefully remove cooled bars from pan and place them on a cutting board and cut them into squares with a very sharp knife. The cherries, if they fall over your slicing lines, will want to give you trouble but if you saw a sharp knife into them slowly before pressing down, they’ll cut neatly and with minimum carnage.
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen
I am Jen the Beantown Baker. Engineer by day and baking maven by night. Hubby serves as my #1 fan and official taste tester. We got hitched back in 2006. Barefoot. In the sand. With the waves crashing behind us. It was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. 
How yummy, and the color is so beautiful!
beantownbaker — March 18th, 2013 @ 10:59 am
Yes, I absolutely love the color of this curd!
I love fruit curds. This combination sounds wonderful. I’ve been wanting to make passionfruit curd for a long time. Hopefully I will get to that soon.
beantownbaker — March 18th, 2013 @ 11:00 am
The passionfruit curd is definitely my favorite of all time. It’s just such a unique flavor.
I love lemon curd on a good fruit quickbread. I once made lemon loaf with lemon curd and it was to DIE for. How long to curds typically keep in the fridge?
beantownbaker — March 18th, 2013 @ 3:21 pm
Oohhh… double lemon – sounds delicious. They never stay around very long when I make them, but I think they’d be fine in the fridge for a week or two.
this sounds delicious! I’ve got some key lime curd in my fridge, not sure what I’ll do with the last bit of it…
beantownbaker — March 19th, 2013 @ 12:48 pm
Key lime curd – YUM! Did you juice them yourself? They’re so tiny.
I love the idea of a blackberry lime curd… two of my favorite flavors married into curd! I love meyer lemon curd, too 🙂
beantownbaker — March 19th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm
I still haven’t been able to find meyer lemons at my store. Of course, I haven’t looked too hard either…
This looks delicious! And I love anything that gives me a use for egg yolks, since I use whites so often.
beantownbaker — March 25th, 2013 @ 1:18 pm
I’m the same way. I hoard recipes that take divided eggs. Now that I started making ice cream, I need more that use whites…
If you make a cake or something with the curd in it or on it does it need to be refrigerated?
beantownbaker — April 4th, 2013 @ 7:15 am
I used this curd in a cake: http://www.beantownbaker.com/2013/03/coconut-almond-cake-with-blackberry-lime-curd-filling.html and the leftovers were stored in the fridge.
This looks amazing, but I was wondering how much it made, I have picked enough blackberries to make 3 times this. Xx
beantownbaker — October 23rd, 2013 @ 12:26 am
It made probably 2.5-3 cups of curd. Hope you enjoy it!