We start with 3 cups of ripe cherries, pitted with my handy-dandy cherry pitter!

A shortbread crust gets pressed down into a square cake pan lined with parchment.

We mix our cherries with lemon juice, sugar, and a bit of cornstarch.

Crust gets crumbled on top.

Baked!

Cut and share, or devour on your own, I won’t tell!

Cherry Pie Crumble Bars
Original recipe via Shutterbean

Ingredients:

Crust:
1 stick plus 5 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Filling:
3 heaping cups pitted cherries
1/2 cup sugar (I used about 2 tbsp as I didn’t want to make it overly sweet)
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Butter an 8×8 square pan and line with parchment paper.  Leave 2 inch overhang and butter parchment.

Beat butter and sugar in a bowl with a mixer until light and fluffy.  Add flour and salt, beat until dough comes together.  It will be clumpy and a bit sandy.  Press 2 1/2 cups of mixture into bottom of pan and press 1 inch up the sides.

For the filling, mix together cherries, flour, lemon juice and salt.  Pour into crust, cover with remaining dough crumbled over the top.  Bake until juicy and bubbly.  If crust starts to brown cover with foil.  My bars took 50 minutes so watch carefully as they did cook quicker than I expected.  Let cool and cut into squares.