Shoofly Bars

When I was a kid, we used to go up to Maine to visit my uncle and cousins on Thanksgiving. Their dessert policy, which I highly support was “a pie per person.” My personal favorite, every year, was the shoofly pie. At the time, I had no idea what was in it. I just knew it was goey and sweet and yummy. Now, in all my adult wisdom, I know it involves one of my favorite, and infamously overstocked, ingredients: Molasses.

So when I came across this “Shoofly bar” recipe I had to try it. I don’t have the metabolism anymore to eat a whole pie, but I’m pretty sure I can get away with a bar. Or Four.

Ingredients:

Crust:
1/3 cup shortening
1 ¼ cups flour
1 tablespoon Sugar
¼ tablespoon salt
Filling:
1/3 cup snipped dates
¼ cup Molasses
¼ tsp baking soda
3 Tablespoons hot water
1 egg
Topping:
½ cup flour
3 tbsp brown sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
pinch ginger
¼ cup cold butter

First off, you want to make your crust, which is basically a simple pastry. Mix together the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Then cut in the Shortening using a pastry blender. You can also do this by criss-crossing two knives. I did that for a long time, until I spent the best 6$ of my life on this little baby.

Once your shortening is looking like small little floured pea-sized grains, moisten the pastry with cold water, one tablespoon at a time, tossing with a fork. Mine took 5 Tablespoons to be Moist enough to handle.

Roll your pastry into a ball.

Then roll it out, into a square. Mine looked more like an oval, but I made it work.

Lay your pastry in an 8x8 or 9x7 ungreased baking pan. Spread the pastry up the sides of the pan, I rearranged excess pieces since my shape wasn’t exact.

Next, Snip your dates.

Or you could by snipped dates, I bought whole, pitted dates, because I love doing extra work.

Sprinkle them on top of your pastry.

Next, we’ll make the topping. Mix together the dry ingredients, and cut in the butter using the same nifty tool shown above. You’ll want the end product to look like a grainy yummy topping.

Next for the filling. Mix your hot water and baking soda. Then add in your molasses and egg. This smells so yummy.

Pour this over the pastry and dates, as evenly as possible.

Then sprinkle on your topping.

Bake at 375 for 25 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown. Let cool, and slice!

Tada!

The flavor of these was great, but I think I'd make a few changes. First off, I would use butter in the crust instead of shortening. The "crust" was kind of bland. Secondly, I would add some melted butter to the filling, I thought the texture was a little off. Definitely a fun experiment!