Jodi and the Peach Bars

So I tried making the Peach Bars . . . you can already tell somewhat of how it went, just by that introduction. I made the recipe exactly as listed except I used King Arthur’s Gluten Free Flour. It was a mixed bag of outcomes though. On the one hand about 2/3rds of it didn’t actually cook all the way through, even though I cooked it a bit longer than she suggested. On the other hand, the part that did cook all the way through was fairly yummy, but a little grainy, even the husband liked it.  Unfortunately, only the outsides cooked through.



The bottom crust.
Completely baked.

From the side.


So today I tried to do a variant of it and see what I could get. First goal was to go more by instinct, which I don’t do very often when cooking because I don’t view cooking as a very strong skill of mine and do not trust my instincts with cooking well.

First thing I changed, was I used Arrowhead Mills Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Mix to see if a different gluten free flour would make any effect. The other change was to use up the crust and the filling as things “looked” correct.



The bottom crust
From the side, I put in just enough to fill about 1/3rd of the pan, which was only about 1/4 before it was baked.

I pitted and chopped up a bunch of cherries.

I put a layer of cherries over the crust, this deviates from the recipe, but I didn't want to use all of the filling mix, because only wanted enough to make it work.

I poured just enough of the filling to come to the height of the cherry layer.

I crumbled some of the crust, like she says to do, over the top, but I didn't use much more than a handful.

All done, it is a little dark . . . completely my fault, I got knitting and forgot about it a bit and it cooked about 15 minutes too long.

Except for being a smidge burnt on the bottom it turned out wonderfully!  I will definitely make this again, using my approach to her recipe.  Also, as much as I love King Arthur Flour, the Arrowhead Mills did not have the grainy texture.

A lovely slice.


With the leftover crust and filling mix, I made little tins with different fruit to try:



From right to left, there is strawberry, plum, and orange. After they have been cooked, they are the other direction here.


The strawberry was surprisingly good, although next time I would chop the strawberry pieces smaller. The plum was good, but the plum flavor was not very strong at all. The orange was good, I used canned mandarin orange, because that is what I had to experiment with and I would use them again, I would chop those into smaller pieces too though. Overall, the experimenting turned out well! I might try next time to cut down the sugar in the recipe some though, because 3 cups of sugar overall is just too much, plus with ripe fruit, it really doesn't need it.