Cherry Crumble Bars

This is a really simple and especially quick summer bake. The buttery, crunchy crumble pairs perfectly with the sweet cherry filling – great to bring to any barbecue.

Sweet, crunchy & perfect

For me, summer means ocean, ice cream and all the yummy summer fruits – watermelon, cherries, nectarines, you name it. And it was one of the best ideas ever to use up the extra cherries at home and make these Cherry Crumble Bars. Seriously. The buttery, crunchy crumble on top (the best part!) pairs oh so perfectly well with the sweet, slightly tart and refreshing cherry filling. And we won’t stop there: the filling is sandwiched in by yet another layer of baked crumble. YUMMY!

You might be asking yourself why I called this recipe “Cherry Crumble BARS” – why bars??? I don’t see any bars, Joelle?
Well, that’s the cool thing about this recipe:

• You can bake it in a round cake pan (20 cm / 8-inch diameter) and can cut beautiful, elegant slices …
• … or you bake it in a 18×18 cm (7×7-inch) square baking pan, and you can cut nice and tidy square or rectangular bars. This version might suite a barbecue more whereas the round crumble cake is ideal for a fancy tea party 🙂

I’ve added lots of photos in this post – enjoy! I tried using two different backgrounds this time, and I also edited my photos a bit differently. Can you tell? I don’t know if I’m over the moon about it or not … Do let me know what you think in the comments down below 🙂

The story behind this recipe

My dad has been all into homemade ice cream the last few months. Some flavours are a bit too exotic for me, but hey, I am a food blogger, so I at least try them – and some have been really good! He made a chocolate caramel ice cream some weeks ago, and also a salted caramel ice cream … those two flavours were absolutely delicious. And by the way, I have been keeping up with my running, in the hopes of not putting on too much weight with the extra calories – a food blogger’s life is a hard one, I tell you 🙂

So the other day he wanted to make another batch of his cherry ginger gelato. That flavour was really interesting … I won’t write a public review, since he does sometimes read my blog and I don’t want him to be offended … 😉 . But he was out the whole day, so instead of the cherries getting overripe, I decided to use them and bake something. I first thought of making some kind of a refreshing cherry mousse, but then I felt that that would just be too rich in this hot weather. After a bit of brainstorming … this is where we’ve landed 🙂

• 

• 

• 

• 

Other fruit options

I wrote this recipe specifically to use up those cherries at home. Us Swiss are a cherry-eating-nation and we take this fruit very seriously. Extremely seriously. We even have a contest where people can show off how far they can spit the pip. Yep. Sigh.
I am proud to be Swiss, but sometimes I do wonder where we got some traditions from, haha 🙂

I think this recipe would definitely work with fruit that is on the moister side, for instance plums, apricots or even peaches. Maybe some summer berries would bake well too, and even some sour apples. I wouldn’t recommend bananas, pineapple, mango though … you get it.

The fruit used must release a little bit of juice, which will make the bars lovely and moist.

Assembly

I’m all about simple summer recipes. Fruit salad, ice cream, a quick and easy bake. I don’t mind using the oven in summer, because it’s not like our flat turns into an instant sauna. But I do try to keep oven time to a minimum, because those few seconds of putting something in or taking something out can be quite the torture with that heat against one’s face.
So this recipe is really a simple and timesaving one!

Base & Crumble

1. The two crumble layers are made of the same dough. One thing less to make, right?
   And theoretically, you don’t even have to take out your mixer. You could mix everything by hand a.k.a. with a whisk and spatula. But if you want to satisfy that craving, you’re gonna’ be a bit faster with a mixer 🙂
2. Start off by melting your butter, and then leaving it to sit at room temp for a good 30 minutes. If you’re in a time crunch, you can melt the butter, let it sit for a few minutes and then stick it in the fridge/freezer for a couple of minutes. Be careful though that you don’t leave it in too long because you really need runny melted butter.
3. Then you mix the butter with the sugar and vanilla, making sure that it’s really well combined.
4. Next, you add all the dry ingredients (you can even add a bit more cinnamon if you’d like), and mix a couple of times with the mixer and then stop – you’ll have plenty of flour streaks left and that is fine!
5. Continue mixing by hand, pressing the dough together to form different sized crumbs.
6. Then you reserve about 120g of that mixture in the bowl for the crumble topping later (the best part!), and the rest goes into the pan – push it down evenly.

Cherry Filling

The cherry filling is really simple to make too. Just cut the cherries in half, pit them and throw them in another bowl; together with the sugar, lemon juice and corn-starch. That’s it!

One more information

You bake these bars twice. Kind of. But still in the same go – ya’ know what I mean? First, you bake the base for about 7 minutes, and then you take the pan out of the oven, pour on the cherry filling, throw on the crumble and sprinkle on some sugar. And then you bake for another 20-25 minutes until the crumble is a nice golden-brown. Couldn’t be simpler!

So, this recipe definitely will also suite those bakers who dislike cleaning up – if everything goes well, you should have less than 10 things to tidy up! Two bowls, a knife, a cutting board, two spoons / spatulas, a cake pan and a mixer 🙂

If you make these Cherry Crumble Bars, do leave me a comment and rate the recipe! Let me know what you think about my little photo-experiment 🙂 And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram and Facebook.

You might also like …

• My Rhubarb Cake with Hazelnut Meringue – you can use apricots, plums, berries etc. too
• The best Swiss Carrot Cake – it’s really moist and perfect for summer too!

Print