Who doesn’t love a good bar? They’re easy, delicious and such a crowd-pleaser. These shortbread bars are soft, crumbly, buttery and topped with a powerhouse flavor combination of raspberry jam and homemade pistachio butter, then finished with more shortbread crumble on top. It’s quite literally everything you could want in a single bite.
What to Notice
- I love the combination of raspberries and pistachios but feel free to play around with jam flavors here. To know if your flavor combo will work, try a bite of a pistachio with your jam of choice. Like it? Roll with it!
- You want to avoid over-mixing dough so it doesn’t get tough. If your dough looks crumbly, don’t worry, just pick it up in your hand and if it comes together when you squeeze it, go ahead and stop mixing!
Servings: 9 Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup salted and roasted pistachios deshelled
- 1, 10 oz jar of seedless raspberry jam
- 2 sticks unsalted butter softened
- ¾ cup of granulated sugar plus 2 teaspoons for the pistachios
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- I teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- ½ teaspoon lemon zest
- Powdered sugar for finishing
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Prepare a 9-inch square baking dish by greasing it with butter and placing two overlapping sections of parchment paper inside so they hang over the edges.
- Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and almond extracts, then the salt and finally the four and mix until the dough just comes together. Transfer 2/3 of the dough into the baking dish and pat down the bottom and slightly up the sides. Now set this aside.
- In a food processer, add the pistachios and 2 teaspoons of sugar and blend until the nuts become a spreadable or buttery texture.
- Layer the pistachio butter on top of the dough in the pan, spreading evenly. Top this with your raspberry jam and add your lemon zest on top of that. Take the remaining dough and crumble it over the jam. Bake the bars for about 40-45 minutes. Let them cool completely before slicing. Finish them with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and serve.
