Strawberry Bars

Well I wasn't planning on posting any recipes for the next couple of days because I am having another procedure done this morning and I won't be cooking for at least a couple of days.  But I was doing my usual looking around on food blogs and I got a craving for something fruity which by the way this was at midnight.  And I started thinking about how it could be anywhere from 2-5 days before I cook again so I NEEDED to and WANTED to cook or bake something.  Well I came across a similar recipe awhile back but Lee wanted strawberries (I would've rather had peaches but then I would've been eating it all on my own) so I decided to go with the recipe I used! (Even though both this recipe and the one I considered on doing are both easily adjusted to using different fruits, or you could even use 2 kinds of fruits.)  But wow, this was awesome and Lee loved it just as much as I did, probably more!  The only thing that was bad was we had to go to the store at midnight because I had everything except strawberries, well I had some frozen strawberries but I wanted to use fresh!

 Strawberry Bars

1 1/2 cups sugar, divided
3 cups All-Purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter cut into cubes
1 egg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 Tbsp. lemon juice
5 cups frozen or fresh strawberries
4 tsp. cornstarch

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Grease a 9x13" pan.

Mix together 1 cup sugar, flour, baking powder, salt in a medium bowl.  Cube cold butter.  Add the butter to the dry mixture and blend with either two knives or a pastry cutter.  Stir in the egg.  Dough will not seem like dough, it will be crumbly and more like a dry mixture but that's the way it's suppose to look.  Push 2/3 of the dough into the prepared pan.

In another bowl place the strawberries with 1/2 cup sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice and gently mix.  Pour on top of the dough in the prepared pan.  Sprinkle the remaining dough over the strawberries.

Bake 45min.-1hr, or until tops brown a little.  Wait till it cools then cut into bars.

Adapted from here.