Harvest Fruit Bars

These bars are delicious! I haven't made them in several years, however every fall I think of them. My good friend Julie gave me the recipe for these bars, in fact the recipe card is in her handwriting. I can't help but get a little teary eyed making them. They were a hit at a get together we had yesterday. We got together with Julie's husband and 3 kids along with Julie's sister and parents. Julie's sister owns a tumbling gym and she invited us all for an afternoon of jumping, running and eating! We all had a great time.

Make up a batch of these for any fall get together.
Harvest Fruit Bars

6 oz. or more diced dried fruit (ie cranberries, pineapple, raisins, apple, coconut, etc.)
1 cup chopped or mashed bananas (about 2)
2/3 cup orange juice
1 tsp. cinnamon or apple pie spice (more needed at bottom of recipe)
3/4 c. butter, softened (original 1 cup)
1/2 c. brown sugar (original 1 cup)
1 3/4 c. flour
1 1/2 c. quick oats, uncooked
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. chopped nuts, optional

Heat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine first 4 ingredients in a bowl. Set aside stirring occasionally.
In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar. Add flour, oats and 1/2 t. cinnamon. Mix until crumbly.
Reserve 3/4 cup of oat mixture for topping.
Press remaining oat mixture onto bottom of 13x9 baking pan.
Bake 15 minutes.
Spread fruit evenly over crust. Sprinkle reserved oat mixture and nuts evenly over fruit.
Bake 16-20 more minutes. Cool completely. Cut into bars.

It makes me smile when I read Julie's recipe cards. She liked to cut down on fats and sugars whenever possible. So this recipe has several reductions with the original amounts in parenthesis. I've used the reduced amounts with fantastic results.

Enjoy!

p.s. ever since I changed the background to my blog, my links within my posts are not showing up the color they are supposed to. I've tried to fix this and can't seem to figure out how. If you know how to fix it, feel free to contact me or leave it in the comments. For now, when you mouse over the text that is linked it will show up another color.