Red, White and Blueberry-Cherry Crumble Bars

What is your favorite thing about Summer? What Resh loves most about summer are the fruits. Wow! As soon as summer rolls around, the super market gets packed with all different varieties of delicious colorful fruits. Sometimes, I don't know which fruits to put in my basket and which to ignore. Kiwi's, pineapples, oranges (a billion different types of oranges), blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches, apricots, plums.. and on and on and on. So I grabbed some blueberries (packed with anti-oxidants by the way) and some cherries. I had decided that I will use the blueberries for my morning yogurt shakes and the cherries to snack on in between lunch and dinner (instead of the chocolates, because I could gobble those up in a day hehe). Anyway, yogurt shakes and plain cherries weren't cutting the mustard for my enormous sweet tooth. I need something crumbly, moist and and gooey. These were gooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey and I LOVE GOOEY!! I think these could be made with any type of berriers you have lying around. Just mix and match!!!!

Red is for the Cherry, Blue is for the berry , and white is for the dough- even though there is nothing sweeter than Freedom, these sure do come close.

Blueberry-Cherry Crumble Bars
adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Yield: I cut these into 36 smallish rectangles

1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cold butter (2 sticks or 8 ounces)
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest and juice of one lemon
4 cups fresh berries (2 cups blueberries/2cups cherries, pitted, chopped)
1/2 cup white sugar
4 teaspoons cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 inch pan.
In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the butter and egg.(TIP: fork doesn't work as well, pastry cutter is best, but I didn't do either- I used my hands to mix in the dough & butter together so that it got crumbly) Dough will be crumbly. Pat half of dough into the prepared pan. In another bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently mix in the blueberries & cherries. Sprinkle the blueberry-cherry mixture evenly over the crust. Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until top is slightly brown. (This took an extra 10 to 15 minutes in my oven.) Cool completely before cutting into squares.