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Home - Bars

Published: Nov 16, 2015 · Modified: Oct 5, 2021 by Amanda Powell · This post may contain affiliate links.

Mulled Cranberry Pie Bars

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This is a sponsored conversation with T-Sugars. As always, all thoughts and opinions are entirely my own. Thank you for supporting brands I love!

mulled cranberry pie bars

Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays. We love making all that food and sharing it with our family and sitting around watching movies while sneaking into the kitchen for another little snack. Of course these days it isn't the same now that stores are open on Thanksgiving. My mom works retail and has to work Thanksgivings so it is more of a Thanksgiving lunc rather than a dinner. It sucks because she will work all night on Thanksgiving and the next day is up for work at 5am or earlier for Black Friday meaning she will get little to no sleep. Last year she didn't even bother coming home and stayed at a co-worker's house who lived closer to her job.
By the time she is done, Black Friday, she is stil working long hours until well after Christmas and is beyond exhausted. Please guys, be kind to your retail workers. They don't make nearly enough to put up with all the trouble the get.

Delicious and warming mulled cranberry sauce
Now that I've got that all out of my system, let's go back to our delicious noms. I said that we have more of a Thanksgiving lunch, but if I am being honest with you, it isn't that big of a deal because Thanksgiving is an all-day affair for us. We get up and bring breakfast to my grandmom's and spend the day cooking and laughing and drinking together so we are all together anyway. We make a ton of food - much more than we could possibly eat because we love to have a lot of Thanksgiving leftovers to feed everyone for the next few days.

Cranberry pie bars make an excellent treat and a great way to use up your leftover cranberry sauce!
The one item that usually gets left behind is the cranberry sauce. We used to eat the canned stuff, except I hated its texture and overbearing sweetness so I decided to start making my own. I recently started making a mulled cranberry sauce using mulling spices to flavor it and it is SO GOOD. I mean, I want to slather that stuff on everything (and I am not the kind of person who slathers sauces on things). Despite how delicious it is, it does usually end up getting left out sometimes, so I decided to use the leftovers to make something new. So I started throwing throwing it on top of shortbread and baking it to make these amazing mulled cranberry pie bars.

Use up your leftover cranberry sauce by making these cranberry pie bars!

I used a powdered mulling spice blend, and T-Sugars Cassonade brown sugar to make this mulled cranberry sauce. The Cassonade sugar differs from your typical brown sugar in that the process it undergoes gives the sugar a richer, more caramelized flavor which blends wonderfully with the spices and the tartness of the cranberries. It also has a great texture that melts well which helps to really infuse the cranberries with its complex flavors. What I love about my cranberry sauce is that is has a great balance of sweet and tart, whereas most cranberry sauces are either too sweet or too tart.

Recipe Card

mulled cranberry pie bars

Mulled Cranberry Pie Bars

Amanda Powell
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Prep Time 10 minutes mins
Cook Time 40 minutes mins
Total Time 50 minutes mins
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Ingredients
  

For Mulled Cranberry Sauce

  • 20 oz fresh cranberries divided
  • 1 ½ cups T-Sugars Cassonade brown sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 ½ tablespoons mulling spice blend
  • ¼ cup water
  • ¼ teaspoon cracked black pepper

For Shortbread

  • 1 cup 16 tablepoons unsalted butter
  • ½ cup T-Sugars powdered sugar
  • 2 cups flour
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
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Instructions
 

  • Mix all the ingredients, except for 1 cup of fresh cranberries for the cranberry sauce together and cook on medium in a skillet until the cranberries have popped and the sauce has thickened. Fold in the remaining fresh cranberries.
  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13 baking pan with parchment paper.
  • Cream the butter and mix in the powdered sugar and beat well. Mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix to combine.
  • Press the mixture into the baking pan, reserving a small portion of it to decorate the top if desired.
  • Prebake the shortbread for 15 minutes.
  • Pour the cranberry sauce mixture onto the shortbread and spread evenly. Cut out shapes with the reserved shortbread, if decorating.
  • Bake the cranberry mixture for 10 minutes, then add the decorative shortbread and bake for a further 9 - 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely before slicing into bars and topping with powdered sugar if desired. The icing mill from T-Sugars makes this an easy job.
Tried this recipe?Tag me on Instagram! @acookienameddesire #acookienameddesire

 

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About Amanda Powell

Baker, photographer, and sometimes world traveler behind A Cookie Named Desire. Obsessed with helping people live life sweetly with delicious food to share with the special people in your life and creating lasting memories.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kristen @ A Mind Full Mom says

    November 24, 2015 at 8:17 am

    You had me at mulled--this looks just incredible and those cranberries are going to be filled with outrageous flavor!

    Reply
  2. Zainab says

    November 16, 2015 at 10:44 pm

    ooooo I love the sound of this pie bars Amanda!

    Reply
    • Amanda says

      November 17, 2015 at 10:34 pm

      Thank you so much!!

      Reply
  3. Beeta @ Mon Petit Four says

    November 16, 2015 at 9:08 pm

    This looks so yummy Amanda! Such a clever idea to use all those spices with the cranberry sauce. And I totally feel for your mom. I've worked retail before and the holidays can be brutal. Hope she can at least enjoy the first half of her day on Thanksgiving<3

    Reply
  4. Medha @ Whisk & Shout says

    November 16, 2015 at 5:17 pm

    So yum! Love the shortbread 🙂 Pinning!

    Reply
  5. Nicole - Coking for Keeps says

    November 16, 2015 at 10:28 am

    Thanksgiving is an all day affair for us as well, starts with breakfast, then cooking, then apps , then dniner and dessert! We always seem to skip the cranberry sauce as well, but this looks pretty darn easy and SO much better than the canned stuff!

    Reply

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Hey, I'm Amanda!

I am the baker and photographer behind A Cookie Named Desire. I'm a cookbook author, food science nerd, world traveler (sometimes) with a major weakness for cookies and cheese.

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