These Strawberry Rhubarb Bars are sturdy yet delicate. With soft cake-like layer at the bottom and a light oats crisp on the top. Sweet and sour. Summery and bright. Perfect dessert to celebrate summer | imagelicious.com
Line a 9x13 inch sheet pan (quarter sheet pan) with parchment paper.
Make the dough layer
In a large bowl, combine the room temperature butter, ricotta, egg, sugar, and vanilla extract. Mix well together until smooth and creamy. Use a spatula or a mixer.
Add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix in until all the flour is well incorporated. I find it's easier to do that using a spatula at this point but feel free to use a mixer if you'd like.
Using your hands or a spoon, spread the dough onto the prepared sheet pan. Making sure that it's spread evenly and covers the whole sheet pan.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Make the Strawberry Rhubarb Filling layer
Cut the strawberries into 1/4 inch (1 cm) pieces. No need to be really precise.
Cut the rhubarb into 1/4 inch (1 cm) pieces.
In a medium bowl, combine the cutup strawberries, rhubarb, flour, and sugar. Mix well until the flour and sugar cover the fruit.
Make the crisp topping layer
In a separate bowl, combine all the ingredients for the crisp topping layer.
Using a patry knife or a fork, mix in the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles very coarse sand or fine gravel.
Assemble the Strawberry Rhubarb Bars
After the bottom layer for the bars has been baked for 20 minutes, take the sheet pan out of the oven.
Spread the Strawberry Rhubarb filling all over the dough.
Sprinkle the crisp topping over the fruit filling as evenly as possible.
Return back to the oven for another 35 minutes.
Once baked, cool and cut into 16 bars.
Notes
Flour... Flour... I know that all the calculators (including the one in this recipe plugin) say that 1.5 cups of flour weigh about 180g but my flour always weighs more, almost twice as much.I always scoop the flour right out of container with a measuring cup and lightly tap it on the side to get rid off the top overflow. If you use flour by weight, make sure to see the photos for the texture that you need to expect for the dough. You might need to use more flour if only weight measurements are used.