Posted on May 13, 2009
Filed Under Cookies and bars
Usually when I’m flipping thro’ a cookbook and a recipe JUMPS out and grabs me, it’s a recipe with chocolate chunks or melted milk chocolate in it. This time, it wasn’t though. I think what grabbed me about these bars was the cream cheese. And the fact that when there’s a brown sugar/oatmeal/butter mixture, it’s always good… like these Peanut Butter Dream Bars, for example.
This recipe comes from the Tasteful Delights cookbook. The committee behind this cookbook includes a couple of my friends, Michelle and Monica. Good recipes in there! Sometime, I want to try the stuffed mushrooms, bacon cheese chicken, frozen mocha dessert, and a bunch of others. But for now, we’ve got some scrumptious jam bars…
Jam Bars
2 cups rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Desired amount of cream cheese filling
Any flavor jam
Combine all ingredients in a bowl.
Reserve 2 cups crumbs and press the rest in a 9×13 pan and bake for 10 minutes.
Spread cream cheese evenly over crust, then jam over cream cheese.
I used about 1 cup of cream cheese filling.
I used about 1/2 cup of jam. Next time, I’d use more like 1/4 cup of jam. It was a little too sweet and the strawberry flavor over-powered the cream cheese flavor, I thought. And that’s not good when fruit over-powers cream cheese! ????
Sprinkle crumbs over jam.
Bake until crumbs are golden. After 17 minutes, it looked like this, so I got it out of the oven… looks great to me!
These didn’t last long around here! They’re pretty easy too. They oughta cool before cutting and eating though. They didn’t hold their shape very well while still warm. They are THE best out of the fridge. I don’t think they’d need to be stored in the fridge, but they were extra good when they were chilled. By the way, I made only a half batch (and used an 8×8 pan) because I didn’t have enough of one of the ingredients and I wanted to make them NOW.
About the cream cheese filling, I buy it in tubes at a local bulk foods store, but if you don’t have access to it or would rather make your own, here’s a wonderful cream cheese filling recipe:
8 oz softened cream cheese, 1 egg, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Beat till smooth.
Comments
12 Responses to “Jam Bars”
I love “regular” jam bars, but with a layer of cream cheese filling… they have got to be 10 times better!!! yummy! and just what I DONT need!
These look good. I’ll have to try them sometime. Think I would have to make the cream cheese filling though. Good to see another update.;)
Does the cream cheese filling have to be baked if it has an egg in it? I know in this recipe it is.
Liz, cream cheese filling is something I’ve always wondered about and never really found answers for… Does stuff with cream cheese filling need to be baked? and Does it need to be refrigerated afterwards?
So, here’s what I do: When I make something with cream cheese filling that doesn’t get baked (like filling in a jelly roll), I always use the stuff from the tube. If it gets baked and I don’t have the a tube of filling on hand, I make some filling w that recipe up there. And I usually refrigerate the baked bars/rolls/danish overnight instead of letting them sit out. I also refrigerate cakes with cream cheese frosting.
If anyone has answers, please tell us!
For your Cream Cheese question try this.
http://tinyurl.com/q9zjeq
Wow, Wendell! That’s cool! Now, I don’t care as much about the cream cheese… my question now is HOW did you do that?! You know, making it type itself and the mouse moving and clicking. Maybe I should Google the answer to that question too. ????
I bought that cookbook and gave it to my daughter for Christmas, but first I copied some recipes from it!. And btw, Michelle and Monica are my nieces.
Kay, If you go to this address http://lmgtfy.com/ you can type in any search. It is really good for dumb questions. Like if someone would ask you how to get to Kitchen Scrapbook or how high you rank on the search engines (#1 by the way) you could give them this http://tinyurl.com/qk457a
i made your Jam Bars for our church ladies night and they are awesome,keep the recipes coming!!!
Looks de-lish!
Yum!!! I just made 12 jars of strawberry jam I may have to make these tomorrow. Thanks.
Bobbi
Kay, thanks for stopping by my blog. Did you change servers or something…there are so many posts on here that I’ve missed….I re-added you to my list just in case.
The spoons are screwed on….it isn’t what I really wanted it to look like…I wanted the screws to be smooth and not have the tale tale phillips screwdriver thing on it…tee hee.
I added a nut behine the spoons to make them stand out a bit. I was going to use forks, but was afraid they would hang on clothing and rip stuff. I do have two forks above my microwave…would be hard to snag there.
My spoons do not match either…some even have a story behind them. We drilled holes in the spoons first…then put them up to the doors and matched them up as best we could and put a mark on the doors for the screws. I hope this is making sense….we used long screws and had to saw them off after getting the spoons attached.
Good luck!!!