Continuing GayR's blueberry ideas: Blueberry Pie Bars (cream cheese filling)

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marilynfl

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cooking.nytimes.com

Blueberry Pie Bars Recipe

At first glance, these bars may look like every other fruit crumble bar you’ve had, but they have a secret Between the jammy fruit and buttery shortbread is a bonus layer of sweetened cream cheese you never knew you needed until now Wild blueberries are less watery than conventional blueberries...
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Untried...it was just posted today.

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Update: If you plan on making these, read the comments. Several people felt the bottom layer was too thick and the blueberry layer was too thin. Also comments on how expensive it was if you used Walker shortbread, so lots of alternative options were given. Also most added lemon and some ginger to the cream cheese layer.
 
marilynfl said:
Update: If you plan on making these, read the comments. Several people felt the bottom layer was too thick and the blueberry layer was too thin. Also comments on how expensive it was if you used Walker shortbread, so lots of alternative options were given. Also most added lemon and some ginger to the cream cheese layer.
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Lemon rind would be the perfect addition I think. To the cheese. I always add lemon to blueberry or saskatoon pies. Anyone ever heard of a saskatoon?
 
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It's a prairie tree that offers fruits just like blueberries, perhaps a bit larger, but not so backbreaking to pick. Sometimes the flavour is not as intense as wild blueberries but the skin is more tender, and more intense than cultivated blueberries. Anyway, they were used by the indigenous folk to make pemican for the winter months, centuries ago. I was a prairie person; we had some trees growing beside our outhouse at the cottage. As they were well-fertilized, they provided copious crops. I would wait patiently for my mom's saskatoon pies. When I moved to the BIG city in the east, our landscaper finished our yard and said there is one more thing that would be perfect in this particular spot but I don't know how to get one. I did. My dad was a kid from a BC fruit-growing farm and he had some kind of magic over trees. He brought out a little stick of a saskatoon tree that grew to 40 feet by the time I sold the house. The landscaper wanted one there because the leaves are small and would allow the setting sun through to the deck.

The robins loved it and clearly, when they returned each spring, they had their compasses set for this particular tree. (that always fascinated me) They would sit on a tree in the neighbour's yard and attack any bird that landed on the s. tree. They got most of them but there was plenty to share. The cedar waxwings would sit along a branch and pass a berry from the end guy along to the first one near the trunk. (I love watching animals)

More than you ever wanted to know.

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Ya, I think maybe that's more than 40'. Anyway, fabulous fruit from a little one-foot stick!! (Botany fascinates me, too)
 
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OK so..... I made this. I want to say though that it's like a blueberry cheesecake with a very expensive crust. Good thing that Walker's was on sale.

Good but nothing special. I put lemon rind in the cheese layer and cinnamon in with the blueberries. So lots of good flavours.
 
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