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I've been baking my way through Molly Yeh's Sweet Farm all month. I made the One-Bowl Any-Butter Cookie Bars for choir (peanut butter and tahini because those were the jars I was trying to finish off the tail ends of; I also added dinosaur sprinkles on top because DINOSAUR SPRINKLES). I baked up the Potato Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies for a birthday party, and there were zero leftovers to bring home from that.
Saturday night, I was flipping through the book, trying to decide what to make for the picnic my food writing class was having the next day, and the Cherry Mahlab Linzers caught my eye. I randomly had mahlab on hand, because while we were waiting to pick up pizza from a new-to-us place awhile back, I was browsing the halal market next door, and they had little jars of mahlab and mastic at the counter. And we also had a full jar of cherry jam in the cupboard! ... but I did not feel like doing anything fussy like making sandwich cookies.
So I kept flipping, and came across the Jam Bars, Three Ways. Raspberry coconut cinnamon! Plum hazelnut fivespice! Apple marzipan (almond) cardamom! Which all sounded delicious, but I was missing at least one if not both key ingredients for each of the suggested options. But I was still thinking about the cherry mahlab combo, and decided it was time to pull one of my usual moves: smash the two concepts together and end up with:
1 cup unsalted butter (2 American sticks), room temp
133 g sugar
1t mahlab
1t rosewater - this replaces vanilla in the original jam bar recipe
260g flour - we were out of AP flour, but had bread flour on hand
1/2t kosher salt
40 grams macadamia nuts - somebody ate the almonds I thought we had on hand, so going through the nuts we actually had, I decided the macs were probably going to be the most neutral against the unknown strength of the mahlab taste, especially compared to walnuts and pecans
4 oz (half of an 8 oz container) halva - I modeled my filling off the apple marzipan filling, and used half a container of pistachio halva to supplement the nuts
1/2 cup cherry jam
1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a square metal baking pan with parchment so that you have handles to lift the bars out when they're baked. (The original recipe calls for an 8" pan; I used a 9" and it was fine.)
2. Cream the butter, sugar, mahlab, and rosewater in a mixer until fluffy.
3. Add the flour and salt, and mix until combined.
4. Press about 3/4 of the mix into the bottom of the baking pan until evenly covered.
5. Parbake the bottom crust for 15-20 minutes, until you can see a bit of browning around the edges.
6. While the bottom crust is parbaking, chop the nuts, then add them to the remaining crust mix and combine with your hands until you have a coarse crumble. Repeat with the halva, trying not to blend it in too much.
7. Take the bottom crust out of the oven and let it cool for 5 minutes. Once cool, spread your jam onto the crust evenly, leaving a 1/4" border around the sides. Top with the crumble.
8. Bake for an additional 25 minutes, or until browned on top.
9. Cool completely in the pan. Once cool, remove the bars, and slice. (I did 4x6 to make 24 bars; the original recipe calls for 4x4.)
Saturday night, I was flipping through the book, trying to decide what to make for the picnic my food writing class was having the next day, and the Cherry Mahlab Linzers caught my eye. I randomly had mahlab on hand, because while we were waiting to pick up pizza from a new-to-us place awhile back, I was browsing the halal market next door, and they had little jars of mahlab and mastic at the counter. And we also had a full jar of cherry jam in the cupboard! ... but I did not feel like doing anything fussy like making sandwich cookies.
So I kept flipping, and came across the Jam Bars, Three Ways. Raspberry coconut cinnamon! Plum hazelnut fivespice! Apple marzipan (almond) cardamom! Which all sounded delicious, but I was missing at least one if not both key ingredients for each of the suggested options. But I was still thinking about the cherry mahlab combo, and decided it was time to pull one of my usual moves: smash the two concepts together and end up with:
Cherry Mahlab Jam Bars
1 cup unsalted butter (2 American sticks), room temp
133 g sugar
1t mahlab
1t rosewater - this replaces vanilla in the original jam bar recipe
260g flour - we were out of AP flour, but had bread flour on hand
1/2t kosher salt
40 grams macadamia nuts - somebody ate the almonds I thought we had on hand, so going through the nuts we actually had, I decided the macs were probably going to be the most neutral against the unknown strength of the mahlab taste, especially compared to walnuts and pecans
4 oz (half of an 8 oz container) halva - I modeled my filling off the apple marzipan filling, and used half a container of pistachio halva to supplement the nuts
1/2 cup cherry jam
1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a square metal baking pan with parchment so that you have handles to lift the bars out when they're baked. (The original recipe calls for an 8" pan; I used a 9" and it was fine.)
2. Cream the butter, sugar, mahlab, and rosewater in a mixer until fluffy.
3. Add the flour and salt, and mix until combined.
4. Press about 3/4 of the mix into the bottom of the baking pan until evenly covered.
5. Parbake the bottom crust for 15-20 minutes, until you can see a bit of browning around the edges.
6. While the bottom crust is parbaking, chop the nuts, then add them to the remaining crust mix and combine with your hands until you have a coarse crumble. Repeat with the halva, trying not to blend it in too much.
7. Take the bottom crust out of the oven and let it cool for 5 minutes. Once cool, spread your jam onto the crust evenly, leaving a 1/4" border around the sides. Top with the crumble.
8. Bake for an additional 25 minutes, or until browned on top.
9. Cool completely in the pan. Once cool, remove the bars, and slice. (I did 4x6 to make 24 bars; the original recipe calls for 4x4.)
