I generally follow recipes exactly as written, at least the first time I try them. But when I read through the recipe for Melissa Weller's Raspberry Jam Bars from A Good Bake, the method seemed suboptimal to me. The bars have a layer of jam between two layers of dough, formed into what is essentially a giant freeform Pop Tart. You roll out two pieces of dough, chill them, and then seal them around the jam and crimp the edges together before baking.
I had a few reasons why I didn't want to go the Pop Tart route. First, I generally prefer baked goods that are uniform and predictable sizes. This is especially the case when I'm packing up boxes of baked goods to share with friends (as I was going to do with these bars) and I need to carefully calculate yields. Moreover, I thought that all of the edge pieces of a Pop Tart-like confection would have too much crust and not enough jam. So I figured that I could just modify the method a bit and form the bars to extend edge-to-edge in a pan.
Making the dough was straightforward. You combine flour, sugar, almond flour, salt, and vanilla bean seeds in a bowl; add cubed butter; and mix until the dough comes together. The recipe says you should divide the dough in half and roll each portion out into a 10-inch square. I have a 10-inch square cake pan, so I figured that I could just shape two pieces of dough to fit it exactly. I folded a piece of parchment paper to line the pan and pressed half of the dough into it. Then I pulled out the square of dough (which was easy because it was on parchment paper), put in a new piece of folded parchment, and pressed in the remaining dough. So I had two pieces of dough that were exactly the size of my pan. I was actually making a double batch of this recipe but I only have one 10-inch square pan. However, I do have an 8-inch by 12-inch pan -- which is basically the equivalent of the 10-inch square -- so I repeated the same process with the rectangular pan and formed two pieces of dough that exactly fit into that pan. I put all four pieces of dough in the fridge for a few hours.
While the recipe calls for raspberry jam, I decided to use two different types of jam for my two pans of bars. For the 10-inch square pan, I used whole fruit cherry preserves. For the 8-inch by 12-inch pan, I used black raspberry preserves. For each, I brushed a very thin line of beaten egg white around the edge of the piece of dough in the bottom of the pan, spread jam in the middle of the dough, and then added the second piece of dough on top and pressed the two pieces of dough together. For both pans, the jam appeared to spread out to the edge of the pan -- but this didn't worry me since the pans were lined with parchment and any leaking jam wouldn't stick to the pan. I docked the bars with a fork, going all the way to the bottom of the pan, through both layers of dough. Then I brushed the top piece of dough with egg white and sprinkled on sanding sugar before putting the bars in the oven.
I baked the bars until they were golden on top and let them cool completely in the pan. I decided to cut the cherry bars in the 10-inch square pan first. I simply pulled up on the edges of the parchment paper lining the pan and I was able to remove the entire pan of bars easily, in one piece. I sliced the pan into 25 bars and other than the fact that a little jam was leaking out here and there -- as you can see in the photo above -- I didn't run into any problems. While the bottom crust was pale, it was fully cooked (although I wouldn't have minded if it was a little more done). Then I tried to slice the 8-inch by 12-inch pan of black raspberry bars and that's when everything went wrong.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the dang bars out of the pan. I was gently pulling on the parchment paper and they weren't budging. Finally, I got the bars free, but they got completely mangled because the bars broke as I pulled on the parchment paper and exerted force along the edges. While I was able to cut a few slices that were intact, most of the pan looked like the photo below -- a broken, jammy mess.
I can guess why I ran into so many problems removing the bars from the rectangular pan. The square pan I used is a Parrish Magic Line pan with perfectly square corners. By contrast, the rectangle pan was a Fat Daddio's pan that has rounded interior corners. I think that the rounded corners in the Fat Daddio's pan had a better grip on the bottom layer of dough in that pan, whereas in the square pan there was absolutely nothing to resist as I pulled the bars out. So I do think that my method of shaping these bars to go edge-to-edge in a pan is perfectly viable -- but only if you are sure that you will be able to release them at the end! And yeah, it's probably easier to make these Pop Tart-style, and I'm sure they'll taste the same.
Both versions of the bars tasted fantastic, with a buttery, firm shortbread crust, and a bright, intense, sweet-tart jam filling. I actually preferred the black raspberry bars and I scraped some of the detritus from my cutting board into a plastic container and ate it over the next few days like a cobbler, with a spoon. The top and bottom crust stayed firm and did not become soggy. I couldn't bear to serve the broken pieces to anyone else, except for my friend Dorothy. She and I were roommates for a few years after law school, and during that time she saw everything I baked and was willing to consume what we called the "rejects" -- meaning baked goods that tasted fine but looked terrible. Dorothy reported back that the reject broken black raspberry bars were a huge hit. Honestly, these tasted so good that I legit would make the black raspberry bars again, even if I knew in advance that I would get the same messy, haphazard result. But since I know better, I'll just use a pan with perfectly square corners!
Recipe: "Raspberry Jam Bars" from A Good Bake by Melissa Weller.
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