Blueberry-Peach Crumb Bars

You know that feeling you get when you see perfectly ripe, in-season fruit at the grocery store or market or wherever and you know how good it'll taste, you can feel it exploding on your tongue as you bite into it, and you want to act like you're in a coffee commercial and close your eyes and savor it? And then you stop yourself by thinking of what you would actually do with this gorgeous fruit that would do its perfection justice? And then you quickly walk away after running through a mental list of lofty goals but faltering conviction? 1) Pie 2) some kind of streudel or jam 3) a mystery recipe that you could conceivably dig up on the internet or needle out of a relative. At least this is what i do. OR SHOULD I SAY, AT LEAST THIS IS WHAT I USED TO DO.

until today.

let me convince you to make this recipe. let me list reasons and ply you with pictures.
this recipe is originally listed on allrecipes, but i discovered it on this gorgeous post. i added some peaches and a small handful of raspberries and ended up using a little less total fruit (i had already made a trip back for a damn lemon, i was not going to go back after miscalculating my fruit stash).

this recipe seems so adaptable and fool-proof, and produces a golden, pie-like square that isn't too sweet. i hate overly sweet sweets. i don't like being punched in the face with sucrose, and the actual flavor of fruit (especially the fruits that are normally background players) needs to be the main thing hitting my taste buds (or is it tastebros, nathan burge?).
I'm positive i'm going to use this recipe to honor all in-season fruit. i'm freezing most of this batch in smaller containers to stretch out these tastes. i'm already thinking of future adaptations and creations. i'm pretty fixated on trying a raspberry-apricot version.


Crust/topping:

1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cold butter (2 sticks or 8 ounces)
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest of one lemon

Filling:

4 cups fresh fruit, chopped if needed (i used 2.5 cups blueberries, 1 cup peaches, 1/2 cup raspberries)
1/2 cup white sugar
4 teaspoons cornstarch
juice of 1 lemon (should be a little more than a tablespoon... throw the lemon into the microwave for 10 seconds after zesting, and press down and roll with your hand before cutting and juicing)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 inch pan, or line with parchment paper.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the butter and egg. Dough will be crumbly. Pat half of dough into the prepared pan.

3. In another bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently mix in fruit. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the crust. Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 45-60 minutes, or until top is slightly brown.

tips:

1) i treated this like a pie dough and kept everything quite cold. i took the butter out of the fridge, quickly diced the butter into small cubes and threw the cubes back into the fridge. i then put all of the dry ingredients together, mixed up quickly and threw that in the fridge as well to get a little bit of the chill. the colder you keep the butter before it hits the heat, the flakier everything will turn out. as soon as the filling is mixed, grab everything out of the fridge, mix the butter in with your fingertips by squishing the cubes in your fingers while immersed in the flour mixture. just keep going at it for a minute until most of the cubes are mashed into the flour. then mix an egg in a side bowl and add in. this is just to make everything clingy, so don't mix with your hands too much... just enough to disperse the egg relatively evenly.

2) not to sound naggy, but definitely add all liquid at the bottom of the fruit and lemon mixture, and make sure to mix the cornstarch into the lemon and sugar with your fingertips to avoid letting anything stick to the bottom (i'm looking in your direction, cornstarch) before you throw in the fruit.