Blueberry-cranberry bars

Ingredients

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups white flour
• 2 sticks of butter, chilled
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• juice from one lemon (and zest, if you have it. We didn't)
• 2 cups fresh blueberries
  
• 2 cups fresh cranberries
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 4 tsp cornstarch

Preheat oven to 375.
In a medium bowl, mix the cup of sugar, the flour, and the baking powder together. Mix in the salt (and lemon zest, if you have it). Cut the butter into small chunks. Little by little, add the chunks to the dry ingredients and squish them with your fingers (this technique also used to make Scottish scones ) so that the butter gradually incorporates into the flour mixture. This may take a while. Do it until all the butter is mixed in and the mixture has the texture of wet sand.
Dough should be pretty crumbly. There's a LOT of butter in here.
Take half of the mixture and spread it on the bottom of your glass pan (we used 9"x 13"). Tamp it down as well as you can.
In another bowl, stir the cornstarch, lemon juice, and sugar together. Gently add the blueberries and the cranberries (I usually chop the cranberries in half because it makes them more manageable to eat. But you can probably put them in whole if you'd like). Stir to combine.
Spoon the fruit mixture over the crust in the pan.
Sprinkle the other half of the dough over the top, crumble fashion.
Bake for 45 minutes, or until top is golden brown. Eat.

Thoughts: Delicious. And VERY buttery. Next time I would probably use 1.5 sticks of butter and see how it goes. I don't think it really needed 2 whole sticks. The original recipe called for just blueberries, but I thought the cranberries were a nice addition - they lend a little tiny bit of tang that is quite refreshing. I would store them in the fridge, but I would also take them out and let them warm up a little before eating them (maybe 10-15 minutes?), because the flavors really come out when the bars are a little warmer. Dan says "good ratio of berries to crust" and "fantastic flavor." Plus they were super easy to make. I like that the same dough is used for the crust and the topping. This is not always the case.

Disaster Index: 1/10