Please tell us that you've heard of these bar cookies? We started craving them over the weekend, but when we hopped online to find a recipe, we found next to nothing!
How can it be that more people don't know about this magical combination of cheese-cake-like filling sandwiched between a shortbread crust and a layer of oatmeal-raisin goodness? This must change...
As kids, we always made a beeline for this bar cookie among all the others at the potluck dessert table. Church dinners and family picnics were the only places we ever saw them, which is maybe why they seemed so special to us.
There was just something so perfect about biting into the creamy filling and hitting the crunch of the shortbread. We remember hating sour cream in any other form, but in this bar, its sour tang seemed just right with the sweet, chewy raisins.
We think sour cream raisin bars must be a particular specialty from the Midwest with Scandinavian origins as we can't remember seeing them since leaving home. We found a few recipes posted on group websites - if you have a good one, we'd love to hear it!
• Sour Cream Raisin Bars from Razzle Dazzle Recipes
• Raisin Sour Cream Bars from All Recipes
We also found a few recipes for sour cream bars with other kinds of fruit filling. These also sound quite tempting...
• Sour Cream Cranberry Bars from Taste of Home
• Sour Cream Rhubarb Squares from Savor the Rhubarb
Does anyone else remember sour cream raisin bar cookies? Please?!
Related: Party Desserts for a Crowd
(Image: All Recipes member Terka)
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You are so right - it's truly a Midwest specialty. I waitressed in a truck stop in rural Minnesota in high school and on the days that our baker would make sour cream raisin bars for the afternoon special, the farmers would fight over them until they were gone.
There are no less than 3 recipes for this bar in my grandma's church cookbook, and they're all nearly identical. Here is one of them:
Crust:
1 3/4 cup oatmeal
1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp soda
1 cup melted butter
Blend ingredients together and press 2/3 of mixture into 9x13 pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.
Filling:
4 egg yolks
2 cups sour cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups raisins
3 T. cornstarch
Pinch of nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon (optional)
Combine filling ingredients in saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir often. Reduce heat and cook 5-10 minutes. Pour over crust. Add remaining crust on top in dollops. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
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Thanks, Greenandlean! This is actually almost exactly the recipe I finally wheedled from my grandmother! I'll be posting about my successful baking soon...
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