Recipe - Vegan Blueberry Crumble Bars

When I was making my banana bread as muffins, the other day, my husband asked if I was making anything for him. He hates bananas and banana anything. He doesn't like healthy baked goods very much, either. Not that my banana bread is healthy; it has its share of sugar, but it has a ton of bananas, whole wheat flour, coconut oil, so I suppose it is on the healthier side.

I asked Hubby what kind of muffins he likes (I really have no idea). He said blueberry, but "not the kind that don't taste good and you will probably find a way to make them not taste good, and then I won't eat them and you will get mad at me so maybe you shouldn't make me any muffins." 

I decided, instead of getting mad at him, to make him very unhealthy blueberry bars. What can I say, I like a challenge. It's not that I try to make food that he doesn't like, or don't know how to whip up a sweet treat with very few redeeming qualities, I just avoid feeding my family junk food if I can help it. But this recipe has BLUEBERRIES! That's healthy, right?!?!

That said, I got out my vegan butter, my sugar, and my white flour. There is really not much to this recipe. It is so easy and OF COURSE my husband likes it. Duh!

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 blueberries


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 (you could use smaller, too) 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.
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.

I pat the dough down for the first layer, then spread the blueberries evenly, and add the crumbled dough.

To crumble the dough, I chop it up into little bits with my spoon. Then just sprinkle it evenly among the blueberries and pat just a little bit.

When it comes out of the oven, you just grab the parchment out of the pan and place on a cutting board.

 

I think it's easier to slice up the bars while they are still cooling.

I slice them up kind of small, in hopes that we won't eat too much, but it doesn't matter. They disappear pretty darn quickly regardless. My picky hubby says he could eat the whole pan at once and likes to heat them up for a few seconds in the microwave and put ice cream on top! If anyone can tell me how to make these more healthy and trick him, I would LOVE to know!!!