Cranberry Bliss Bars

These bars are topped with a white-chocolate-cream cheese frosting. They’re sprinkled with dried cranberries and drizzled with white chocolate squiggles.

The first layer is blondie-like- so sweet, soft-ish, but firm- and a great base for this bar. There’s white chocolate and dried cranberries mixed into the base too.

This recipe will make a total of 16 cake bars, at a fraction of the cost of the original.

Ingredients:

Cake

3/4 cup butter, softened

315ml packed light brown sugar

3 eggs30ml minced crystallized ginger

7.5ml vanilla extract

2.5ml salt

375ml flour

2.5ml baking powder

190ml chopped sweetened dried cranberries

100g white chocolate, cut into chunks

Frosting

100g cream cheese, softened

750ml icing sugar

20ml lemon juice

5ml vanilla extract

65ml chopped sweetened dried cranberries

Drizzled Icing

126ml icing sugar

15ml milk

10ml vegetable shortening

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180˚C.

Make cake by beating the butter and brown sugar together with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the eggs, ginger, vanilla, and salt and beat well. Gradually mix in the flour and baking powder until smooth. Mix the chopped dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks into the batter by hand. Pour the batter into a buttered 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Use a spatula to spread the batter evenly across the pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the cake is lightly browned on top. Allow the cake to cool.

Make the frosting by combining the softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. When the cake has cooled, use a spatula to spread the frosting over the top of the cake.

Sprinkle 65ml of chopped dried cranberries over the frosting on the cake.

Make the drizzled icing by whisking together powdered sugar, milk, and shortening. Drizzle this icing over the cranberries in a sweeping motion with a squirt bottle or fill a small plastic storage bag with the icing and cut off the tip of one corner.

Cover the cake and let it chill out in the fridge for a couple hours, then slice the cake lengthwise (the long way) through the middle. Slice the cake across the width three times, making a total of eight rectangular slices. Slice each of those rectangles diagonally creating 16 triangular slices.