Raspberry Patch Crumb Bars

The temperatue outside is on the rise, so it must be raspberry picking time. I "pick" my raspberries at Sam's Club. Ha, ha, ha. No bugs, no snakes, just a polite swipe of my credit card at the check-out counter and away I go.

Today's offering is from a recipe I found on the Taste of Home web site: Raspberry Patch Crumb Bars. The crust in this recipe was a little different from what I'm used to: you cut shortening into the flour instead of butter. What?! No butter?! I don't know if I'm gonna like this....


Here are the eggs going in. Don't those yolks look bright? I've been using Egg Land's Best lately, and I really notice a difference in taste.


Here is the crust batter going into the pan. I found that the shortening produced a sticky dough, it wasn't "crumbly" in the least. I even added more flour trying to dry it out some, but I never achieved a good texture.



Aren't the raspberries beautiful? The recipe says to toss them with sugar and starch and spread over the crust. Word of WARNING: TASTE your raspberry/sugar mixture to see if it is sweet enough!!! The berries I used were so tart (lip puckering tart) they almost ruined the whole batch of cookies. I had to coat the finished bars with a thick layer of confectioner's sugar to counter the tartness.

Here is the pan right before it goes into the oven. See how lumpy the crumble looks. It's more like cookie dough than crumble. I know, I know, I'm obsessed with the crumble, but it just doesn't look right.


The finished product. The raspberries look bright and refreshing, and oh so summery.


And the crumble?

It looks okay, doesn't it?

It doesn't look lumpy, does it?

Please lie to me and tell me my crumble doesn't look lumpy.