Every year at Thanksgiving I look forward to making these bars with the leftover cranberry sauce. I even buy an extra bag of cranberries just to be sure that I have enough leftovers!

Side note: I’ve been thinking about my resolutions for this year, and I’m really having a hard time setting goals or aspirations, but as I sat down to write this post, the one thought I had was that I want to make more of these bars this year. So there’s that.

Cranberry Oat Bars

I often see raspberry oat bars in bakeries. You know the ones, they have an oat bottom, a layer of raspberry jam, and are topped with an oat crumble. That’s these, except with a cranberry sauce layer.

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cup quick oats (use whole if you prefer)
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup walnuts (optional)
• 1 cup cold butter
• 1 cup cranberry sauce or your favorite jam
• *possibly more butter or a touch of ice cold water

• Preheat the oven to 350 and butter a 9 inch baking pan.
• Place the flour, oats, sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts in a food processor and pulse a few times. Add the butter and continue to pulse until coarse crumbs form. You want the mixture to be coarse, but to also hold together when squeezed. *This is where I sometimes have a mixture that is too dry, and when that’s the case, I think that the bottom layer is too crumbly when you’re trying to cut and eat the bars. When the mixture won’t stay together when squeezed, I will add a few more Tbsp of butter or a couple Tbsp of cold water to pull things together.
• Remove about 1 1/2 cups of the crumb mixture and set aside.
• Press the remaining mixture evenly into the bottom and somewhat up the sides of the greased pan.
• Gently spread the cranberry sauce over the bottom layer.
• Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture evenly over the sauce layer.
• Bake for 45-50 minutes until the top is lightly browned. Let cool and then slice into bars.