Kim Boyce’s Strawberry and Rye Crumble Bars

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I think recipes have fungal ways. They weave through the underbelly of the internet, running thousands upon thousands of dark kilometers before popping a head through someone’s blog post. And then down they go again, before bursting through somewhere entirely else. Same micorrhiza, different location, same recipe.

I’m into nourishing this mycorrhiza, these paths my recipes travel. I cherish their provenance, their arrival from somewhere, and someone. I don’t think anything is truly original in the recipe world.

If we bloggers didn’t write the micorrhiza, it would stay invisible beneath us. Recipes would seem one offs, original events, and the micorrhiza, plucked of its fruit, would start to die.

There are too many blogs out there celebrating only the blogger with their recipes. Let’s change this trend and acknowledge the fabric of our creativity, so it continues to bring us more and more recipes to delight in, manipulate and make our own.

This shortcake crumble bar recipe, well, I didn’t manipulate at all. Actually, that’s not true- I used salted butter, but otherwise, VERBATIM. Oh, and the name, I changed the name. But honestly, this recipe is pretty much perfect just how it is. Kim Boyce, I think, is almost perfect. She’s the author of this recipe. I’m sure it’s not her first crumble bar, that it, too, has a provenance, but there’s something very much Kim’s about it nonetheless. It’s not too sweet, it’s rich and dark with the rye flour and brown sugar, and it has just the right amount of bite in the crumble from the processed oats. Please try this, and tell me what you think of the best shortcake crumble micorrhiza on the internet, or the world, whichever’s biggest…

1. Butter a (23cm) springform pan, and preheat the oven to 140C (265F).

2. To make the shortbread, sift the 125ml rye flour, 250ml plain flour,
80ml dark brown sugar and ½ tsp sea salt into a medium sized bowl.

3. Mix the vanilla with the melted butter and pour this into the centre of the dry mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon to thoroughly combine. The mixture will seem dry, but just make sure all the dry ingredients have been moistened. Using your hands and the wooden spoon, press the mixture into the spring form pan until it is evenly spread and smooth across the top. Put the pan in the freezer for 30 minutes to chill.

6. Baked the shortbread for 50 minutes. Take out and cool to room temperature while you prepare the crumble mix.

7. Melt the 85g salted butter in a small saucepan and set aside to cool.

5. Turn up the oven to 180C (350F).

8. Make the crumb topping by adding together: the 250ml rolled oats, 45ml lightly packed dark brown sugar, 90ml rye flour, 60ml plain flour, 45ml white sugar, 1 tsp sea salt, in a food processor and processing until the oats start to break up a bit. If you don’t have a food processor, you can probably miss this step without too dire a repercussion.

9. Pour in the slightly cooled butter, mixing with a spoon until all the crumbs are moistened. With your hand, squeeze and crumble the mixture until it is unevenly crumbly, but with lots of large bits and not too many really small bits. Put in the fridge while the oven continues to heat up, or longer if you want.

8. Slather the strawberry jam over the shortbread in the pan and then break up the crumble topping a little in your hands (it will have hardened into largish clumps in the fridge) as you sprinkle it over the jam. Bake for 50 minutes, or until the topping is nicely browned.

9. Remove from the oven and let the bars cool completely in the pan.

10. To serve, cut in wedges. I found the bars to be very ‘storable’. More so than Kim Boyce thinks. We kept eating them for a week, and I think they even got better!

This post is also featured in Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays and Real Food Wednesday- two very cool Food Carnivals, check them out!