Raspberry crumb bars with homemade raspberry filling

I absolutely love streusel topping. I love crumbly toppings made of flour and oats and butter. I love it atop muffins, cobblers, coffee cakes...to me it really takes baked goods to a whole notha level. That topping makes me weak in the knees. If I see something covered in it I have the urge to gobble up the whole thing-but, that would not be very ladylike of me. (Or I do it in private ;D) Well if you are like me you will love these bars because the top AND bottom are made of crumbly goodness. These bars come out chewy on the bottom, soft and oh-so fruity in the middle, and crunchy and crumbly on the top. Its a triphecta of serious tastiness.

Now, you could just use store bought jam for these babies, but what's the fun in that? Go the little extra mile, and make the filling yourself. It will be a fun and useful thing to add to your repertoire (and a reason to use all that cornstarch that's just been sitting in the pantry doing nothing)

Also, you don't have to do raspberry. You can make the filling blueberry, or strawberry rhubarb, or just plain strawberry...again, whatever you have on hand. But I will give you the recipe I used and you are more than welcome to tweak it accordingly.

2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
3 tbsp cornstarch

Add 2 cups raspberry to pot. Add 1/4 cup water and all of the sugar and lemon juice. Stir to combine. Cook the mixture on medium-low until the berries burst and the mix looks mostly like liquid with a bunch of seeds in it. (around 5-10 minutes). If you don't mind there being lots of seeds in your fruit filling-you can skip this step. I chose to leave the seeds in, but if you prefer you can remove the mixture from the heat and push through a sieve to remove the seeds. Add the mix back to the pot, and return to medium-low heat. Simmer for about 5 minutes and add the rest of the berries. Lastly, add the cornstarch to the other 1/4 cup of water to make a slurry, and add it to the pot-this will thicken the mixture and give it a jam-like consistency. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 10 minutes. After it is done thickening, remove it from the heat and set aside until you are assembling the bars.

For the bars you will need:

1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
and the raspberry filling that you just made

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and bust out that food processor again! Putting the butter in first, put all ingredients EXCEPT the jam in the processor and mix until it's very crumbly and gorgeous. Set aside 1 1/2 cups of the crumbs. Put the rest of the crumb mixture into an 11x7 cake pan and press down to make sure it is evenly distributed and there are no holes or gaps. Next spread that beautiful fruit filling over the top with the back of a spoon, and cover with the reserved crumbs from before. Then you just bake for 30 minutes, or until perfectly golden, cool to room temp and enjoy! I know, I know, it is not exactly the most healthy recipe because of the sheer amount of butter that goes into the crumb topping but they are delicious with a cup of coffee or tea, and you can't say no when you cut out that first piece...

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