Recipe - Vegan Cranberry Bars

I scored some beautiful fresh organic cranberries from my food CSA, Farm Fresh to You a couple weeks ago. I was thinking that, for the first time, I was going to try my hand at making cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. Since my mom was making the vegan feast, and she always buys ready made cranberry sauce, I thought this might be my opportunity to contribute. I was hesitant and indecisive, though, and I only ordered 1 container which hardly seemed like enough to make a batch big enough to feed everyone.

I figured I'd probably just hunt down some more organic cranberries (I'm always up for the Organic Challenge - we have a ton of options here in SoCal). When I mentioned making it to my mom, somehow, by the end of the conversation, my dad had been tasked with the cranberry hunt, she decided she was going to make the cranberry sauce, and I was off the hook for cooking ANYTHING yet again. I'm not complaining. We thoroughly enjoy the amazing meal my mom puts together. I just needed something to do with my own 2 cups of cranberries, now. 

I did a little Pinterest searching and came up with a VERY simple recipe. I really wasn't up for a ton of ingredients and multiple steps. I had my food processor ready, cranberries, I was in my pjs and had no intention of getting out of them this weekend.

I LOVE this recipe. It was SO simple. There are 6 ingredients and they are the same ones EVERYONE has in their kitchen. I made these vegan, but the only thing that makes them vegan is the vegan butter, so of course you could sub some other butter, or spread.

The BEST thing is that it got the picky hubby seal of approval. This guy is one tough critic when it comes to food, so this is a great honor.

Recipe adapted from The View From Great Island - I just took out the regular butter, and scratched out ingredients that would have made me have to put actual clothing and shoes on and go to the store.

What you need:

1 cup softened vegan butter
2/3 cup sugar 

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups cranberries


What you do:
Preheat the oven to 350F
Mix the butter and sugar together then add in the salt and vanilla.
Mix in the flour.
Line an 11x7 baking pan with parchment paper or tinfoil so you can easily to lift the bars out of the pan when they are done baking OR grease or spray your pan with non-stick spray.
Gently pat down 2/3 of the dough into the pan, spread evenly.
Spread the cranberries the cranberries evenly across the top and gently crumble the rest of the dough on top, nice and evenly. You can pat gently, but you don't need to press it. The crumbliness makes these bars really yummy.
Bake for about 45-50 minutes until the bars get a golden color.
Remove from pan, let cool on rack, and slice, or slice right in pan once cool.

Enjoy!