Image Source: Cherry

Ingredients

• 1 Cup each of Firmly Packed Brown Sugar, All-Purpose Flour and Rolled Oats
• ½ Cup each of Softened Butter and Cherry Preserves
• ¼ Cup of Crushed Mixed Nuts
• 1 Teaspoon of Baking Powder
• ¼ Teaspoon each of Almond Extract and Vanilla Extract
• Cooking Spray (I find that Crisco® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray works well here)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and prepare an 8 inch square baking pan by spraying with nonstick cooking spray or greasing. Lining it with parchment paper also works.
2. In a medium sized mixing bowl add the butter and sugar and beat until the mixture becomes nice and smooth and fluffy. Continue beating while slowly adding in the almond extract and the vanilla extract. Now gradually add the flour followed by the baking powder stirring all the while. Then add the oats and half of the nuts and continue mixing until the mixture becomes crumbly.
3. Remove ½ of a cup of the mixture and put to one side as we will be using it as topping in a little while. Transfer the remainder of the mixture into your prepared baking pan and use a spatula to spread it evenly. Gently pat the crumble base so that it becomes slightly compacted.
4. Now spoon the cherry preserves evenly over the slightly compacted crumble base that is already in your baking pan. Sprinkle the rest of the crushed nuts over the cherry preserves. Use a fork to work the crushed nuts into the cherry preserves.

   
   Bowl of Drained Preserved Cherries
   Image Source: Cherry

5. Sprinkle the ½ cup of crumb mixture that we reserved earlier over the top of the cherry preserve/nut layer. Use the back of a fork to roughly even out the topping layer. As we are after a rough surface effect on the top you don’t have to have it all perfectly smooth.

6. Put into oven and bake until lightly browned (around 35 to 45 minutes depending upon the type of oven). When cooked, transfer from oven to a wire rack for cooling and once cooled cut your chewy cherry bar slab into bars of desired size. Enjoy!

   
   Cherry Market Display
   Image Source: Cherry