Coconut Lime Cranberry Pecan Bars—Secret Recipe Club

These Coconut Lime Cranberry Pecan Bars that I made for the Secret Recipe Club were a perfect pick to make.  I made them for the monthly book group I’m in and also gave some to one of the boys’ bus drivers to thank her for the year of rides home from school.  They really are good!  The blog I got them from was my assignment for June, Anna’s blog, bcmom's kitchen.  Anna’s blog was a new one for me and I really enjoyed looking through her recipes.  Yum!

Anna got this recipe from her local newspaper’s food section that was posted in a cookie contest.  I made a few little changes to the recipe.  The filling has some cranberry juice in it and while I was at the store to get some, I saw some cranberry lime juice and thought that sounded really good.  So I decided to use that and lime zest instead of orange zest that was also in the recipe.  That cranberry lime juice was really good, it was from Ocean Spray.   Other than that and some slight changes to the icing recipe, I followed Anna’s recipe.

Just for the heck of it, I only iced about half the bars.  They are good both ways.  I put some lime zest in the icing, so there is a little extra kick in that.

Coconut Lime Cranberry Pecan Bars, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Anna at bcmom's kitchen

Crust:

1  1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans

1/4 cup finely chopped dried cranberries

Filling:

2 large eggs

1 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons cranberry lime juice (or cranberry juice)

1 teaspoon lime zest (about half a large lime or all of a small lime)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans

1 cup chopped dried cranberries

1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Icing:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tablespoon cranberry lime juice

1/2 tablespoon lime juice

1 tablespoons heavy cream

1/2 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line a 9x13 inch baking pan with non stick foil (or don’t, you don’t have to).  For the crust, put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine.   Add the cold butter and pulse until well combined.  Also combine the pecans and cranberries.  Press the mixture onto the bottom of the pan.  Bake for 12 minutes.

While the crust is baking, make the filling by whisking together the eggs, sugar, cranberry-lime juice, lime zest and vanilla.  Stir in the pecans, cranberries and coconut.  Pour evenly over hot crust (spreading it carefully).  Return to oven and bake for 25 minutes.  Let cool on wire rack.

Make icing by combining all ingredients in a medium sized bowl and whisking together until smooth.  Remove bars from pan by lifting the foil edges.  Set on a cutting board and slide the foil out from under the bars (that’s what is so great about non-stick foil and you don’t have to cut bars in the pan).  Cut bars into desired sizes.  Drizzle icing over as many bars as you’d like.  (You can drizzle the icing before cutting the bars if you’d like, but I like having icing dripping down the sides of each one.)  Let icing dry for 20-30 minutes to harden if you want to stack the bars for storage or serving.

Being a chocolate gal, these are still great as is, but I also can’t quite thinking that they’d be good with some mini chocolate chips in the filling or possible drizzled with melted white chocolate.  Ooh, yum.  Great blog, Anna.  Thanks!