Raspberry Oat Bars

These bars are very simple, but you can see my blog for additional details. You can always bump up the amount of jam to 16 ounces if you want more fruit.

This recipe is actually very versatile, because you can vary the kind of cake mix, and kind of jam. How about chocolate cake with raspberry jam? Or lemon cake? White cake with cherry or blackberry jam? There are plenty of specialty jams out there at stores such as Wegman’s or Harry & David’s, and I’m sure most of them would pair wonderfully with a basic cake mix. Or, you can try lemon or lime curds, pumpkin or apple butters, or a combination of jam and curd — maybe some nice lemon curd and blackberry jam?

You start with a box of yellow cake mix. Just plain old yellow, not the Butter Recipe yellow, which has artificial butter flavoring added to it. Trust me, we are putting almost 2 sticks of butter into the recipe, we don’t need any artificial butter flavor on top of that.

1. Preheat oven to 375F.

2. Combine dry cake mix and oats in a bowl.

3. Add melted butter, vanilla and zest to oatmeal/cake mixture, and mix thoroughly.

4. Pat 1/2 of the crumbs down in a 9″x13″ pan, patting firmly.

5. Combine jam and lemon juice until smooth.

6. Spread jam on top of crumb layer evenly.

7. Sprinkle second 1/2 of crumbs on top of jam layer, patting down gently when finished.

8. Bake at 375F for 18-23 minutes, until golden brown.

9. Take out and let cool

10. Slice once cool. Can be stored, covered, at room temperature