Raspberry Cream Cheese Bars

Last week was my friend Sue's birthday. Sue is currently a coworker but I have known her from college when we were both English majors. We both enjoyed editing and took a publishing class together in hopes that it would prepare us for future careers as editors. Instead the class was full of wanna-be writers who complained about editors and generally spent the class discussing other writers, pretentious literary magazines, and strategies for getting published. But it was a memorable experience. The most I remember from that class was a lot of discussion on how Raymond Carver's short stories were so heavily edited that his editor, Gordon Lish, should have taken writing credit for them. That actually was really interesting.


I have to digress for a moment and mention another memorable English class I took in college (but I don't think Sue was in this one). OSU had no sort of 'editor track' for English majors, and most specialties focused on different periods or styles of literature. I knew I wanted to be an editor and as a member of the honors program my advisor was able to craft some kind of customized specialization where I took classes geared towards working in publishing. So one of them was an upper level grammar class. I have a sickness where I actually really like grammar and especially like diagramming sentences. I have liked diagramming sentences since grade school. So one of my favorite and most memorable assignments from this grammar class was to diagram William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Now, Faulkner was the bane of my existence in one of my literature classes, but I do appreciate this speech as one of the most beautiful pieces of literature I have ever read (yet really difficult to diagram!). So if you are in an "English class" frame of mind right now, check out the speech here. It's beautiful.


Anyway, Sue and I lost touch for a little while after college but eventually she joined me in the world of publishing and now we get to commiserate about deadlines, page proofs, comp houses, project-worker versus full-time positions, deadlines, authors, PMP, and deadlines. But aside from talking about work, Sue is someone I feel I just 'click' with and I consider her a dear friend. She has always been really supportive and she and her husband even helped Jason and me move into our home. So on her birthday, I wanted to do something to celebrate it at work and I planned to bake. (I also took her a card and a potted plant. I'm not that sure of myself that I think my baking is a gift unto itself.)


I had a recipe for some Raspberry Hazelnut Linzer cookies that I had been wanting to make for a long time, but was waiting for a special occasion because they looked so time consuming. I had been wanting to make this type of cookie since I saw it on the February 2007 cover of Martha Stewart Living magazine.

So on the night before Sue's birthday, I started making the cookies. I made the dough, and it had to refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before I rolled it out. While the dough chilled, I boiled the raspberry jelly and then strained it to remove the seeds. I had the cookie cutters all picked out. When the time came, I started rolling out the dough to cut out the cookies, and it just crumbled everywhere. It was sticking to the rolling pin but even when I could prevent it from sticking it was falling all over the place, to the point that it just wouldn't work. I don't know what went wrong, and I fought with it for awhile, but eventually had to give up and pitch the dough in the trash.

There I was with a bowlful of strained raspberry jelly, and trying to figure out how to salvage it. I searched allrecipes.com and found a recipe for Raspberry Cream Cheese Bars that I happened to have all the ingredients for. I only made half the recipe, and instead of slivered almonds I used some mixed-nut ice cream-topping I had. They actually came out like a raspberry version of the oatmeal carmelitas I love to make. I'm not a big fan of fruit, so I probably wouldn't make them again, but I thought they were okay, and the recipe definitely came to the rescue. [Oh, and as a somewhat ironic side note, I wasn't able to give them to Sue on her actual birthday anyway. We had a really bad snowstorm so I decided to work from home that day rather than risk the commute.]

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
11 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
18 ounces red raspberry preserves
1/3 cup chopped slivered almonds

DIRECTIONS
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Combine the oats, flour, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture and mix well. Press three-fourths of the mixture into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 11-13 minutes or until set and edges just begin to brown.
Meanwhile, in a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Spread over crust. Drop preserves by spoonfuls over cream cheese mixture; carefully spread evenly. Combine almonds and remaining oat mixture; sprinkle over preserves.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until set and edges are golden brown. Cool before cutting. Store in the refrigerator.