Cranberry Curd Bars with Shortbread Crust

OH BOY IT'S BEEN FOREVER SINCE WE'VE DONE ANYTHING. HERE'S SOME CURD FOR YOU.

Ingredients

For the crust: Use the crust from the blueberry-cranberry bars recipe, but with 1.5 sticks of butter, not 2.
For the curd:

• 12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries (one standard bag)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (or 2 tsp of the stuff in the little lemon-shaped squeeze bottle -- that shit's powerful)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup softened butter, cut into tablespoons

Line a glass baking pan with parchment paper. Make the shortbread crust, bake it in a 375 oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven.
In the meantime, make the curd.
Place cranberries and 1/2 cup water in a small/medium saucepan and boil for five minutes, until the cranberries lyse and get mushy. Stir occasionally.
Pour them through a fine mesh sieve and press the puree through the sieve with a spatula. This might take a while. Don't be daunted, and be sure to get all the puree you can.
Allow puree to cool. Throw away the skins. You will not need them.
To the cool-ish puree, add the sugar, eggs, yolks, salt, and lemon juice. Stir completely. You might want to use a whisk.
Make a double-boiler and whisk the curd furiously until it thickens (it'll already be pretty thick, but it needs to thicken more) and gets lighter in color. It should read 150 on your candy thermometer. 10-12 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in all the butter all at once. Because you've used a double-boiler and hence haven't scrambled the eggs, you won't need to strain the curd again.
Pour it into the shortbread crust that's waiting.
Bake at 350 for something like 15 minutes, or until the curd is mostly set but jiggles SLIGHTLY in the center.
Refrigerate before serving. Nom nom.

Thoughts: The original recipe calls for a different sort of crust -- one that has walnuts in it. Since neither Dan nor I like walnuts, we decided to use a similar (we thought) sort of crust that we've used in cobbler-type bars, etc. The flavor of the crust was really good, but I personally thought it was a little too tough -- it didn't taste at all like it does when it's beneath cranberry-blueberry bars. Maybe the curd did something to it, or we baked it for too long before putting the curd on top. Maybe reduce baking time to 20 rather than 30 minutes? But the flavor was really good. The curd was also good -- you have to be sure to keep it refrigerated, or else it will sort of melt. Not too tart, but tart enough? We would probably have used a little more lemon.

Disaster Index: 1.5/10 (Dan says 1, I say 2)

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

Cranberry Orange Scones

Ingredients

• 2.5 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar (plus 3 tbsp, if using fresh cranberries, which you should be doing)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, chopped into small pieces
• 1.25 cups chopped fresh cranberries (or dried, if you must)
• 1 large egg
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 cup whole milk
• 2 tsp orange extract

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Line a large sheet with parchment or wax paper.
In a food processor, pulse the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, salt, and butter together until it resembles a coarse meal. Set aside in a large bowl.
In a small bowl, toss the chopped cranberries together with the 3 tbsp sugar until thoroughly coated. Stir into flour mixture.
In another small bowl, beat together the egg and egg yolk. Stir in the milk and the orange extract. Add the whole mess into the flour/cranberry mixture and work together with your hands until well-incorporated.
On a well-floured surface, and using well-floured hands, pat the dough into a 1" thickness. You'll probably have to add more flour. I swear, I had to add like, 2 more cups of flour to make this not sticky. Using a cookie cutter about 2" diameter, cut the dough out into rounds.
Place rounds on the cookie sheet and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or until golden.
Eat.

Thoughts: These came out a little flat (topologically, not flavor-wise). I'm not sure why -- maybe add some leavening? I don't know. I think these could have used more cranberry and more orange extract. Also, it was a great idea to use fresh cranberries; they add a really nice tartness that you can't get with dried cranberries. I'm wondering if we can use our griddle scone recipe as a base, and still add blueberries or cranberries. Would they cook sufficiently on the griddle? Stay tuned. Daniel really liked the texture. I wish they had been a little more fluffy and puffy, but what can you do?

Disaster Index: 3/10

Update: We tried the suggestions in "thoughts", using the Scottish scones as a base and using both blueberries AND cranberries. Much improved. 1/10. Would bake again.