By Nat Levin
There’s something to be said for a dessert that pleases thrice – once for the ease of making it, next for the way it makes your kitchen smell, and finally, of course, for how it tastes. These cranberry crisp bars check all those boxes. The idea for the multipurpose crust and crisp topping is borrowed from a Ruth Cousineau recipe via Smitten Kitchen, a clever trick I tucked away for future use and am happy to employ here.
These bars come together quickly and are a bright, festive addition to your holiday dessert arsenal. Both the crust and the filling are relatively forgiving. Feel free to swap in different nuts if you don’t like pecans or already have a surfeit of almonds. And for the filling, which is quite tart, you can increase the sugar if you’d like, sub ground ginger for fresh, or add a splash of Cointreau if you have it lying around. One non-negotiable, though: a scoop of vanilla ice cream is practically mandatory with this dish!
For the crust and crisp topping:
1.25 cups / 150 grams all-purpose flour
1 cup / 95 grams rolled oats
⅓ cup light or dark brown sugar / 71 grams
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1.5 sticks / 169 grams unsalted butter, cold and roughly cubed
⅓ cup / 76 grams milk
1 cup / 115 grams pecans
For the filling:
12 ounces cranberries, fresh or frozen (don’t thaw if frozen)
⅓ cup / 71 grams granulated white sugar
A 1” x 3” piece of ginger, about the size of a chunky thumb, peeled and microplaned or very finely minced
Juice and zest of one large (preferably organic) naval orange, yielding about ¼ cup juice and 1 tablespoon zest
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
1 tablespoon cornstarch
To make the crust and topping, combine flour, oats, sugar, salt, and vanilla in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse a few times to combine, then add half of the butter, pulse a few times, then add the rest. Pulse 25 to 30 times, until the butter is worked into the flour in small pieces. Pour in the milk and pulse 5 to 10 more times, until the dough holds together in clumps and begins to stand up on its own against the walls of the food processor. If it’s not clumping, add more milk by the tablespoon until it holds together.
Scrape the dough out into a medium bowl and set aside. To do this without a food processor, start with butter in smaller cubes and use your fingers to work it into the flour until it forms very small crumbs. Then stir in the milk with a wooden spoon.
In the bowl of the food processor – no need to wipe it out – pulse the pecans until they form bits about the size of a tic-tac. Alternately, use a hammer to pound the pecans into the desired size.
Grease an 8×8 baking dish, then shake about three-quarters of the dough into the dish. Use your fingers or the bottom of a glass to pat the crust down evenly. It should be about ¾ of an inch thick.
Add the pecan bits to the dough remaining in the bowl and set aside. Put the baking dish in the fridge while you make the filling, and preheat the oven to 375.
To make the filling, combine the cranberries, sugar, ginger, orange juice and zest, and cardamom in a medium sauce pan. Cook over medium heat for ten to fifteen minutes, until most of the cranberries have burst and their juices begin to condense. Turn off the heat and stir in the cornstarch. Let cool for five minutes; the mixture will thicken considerably. It’s okay if there are small lumps of cornstarch visible in the filling – they will disappear once baked.
Spread the cranberry mixture on top of the chilled crust, then cover the cranberries with the pecan crisp mix. You can pinch the crumble into larger crumbs if you’d like to have some filling showing through, or sprinkle so it uniformly covers the cranberries.
Bake at 375 for 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is lightly browned and the cranberry mixture is bubbling. Let cool for at least an hour before serving. I find that the texture is actually best after sitting for a day. It can definitely be made in advance and stored tightly covered on the counter in a cool kitchen. Makes about 12 squares.
