This is a good recipe with a few minor adjustments reduce the butter to 1 1/2 sticks or 3/4 a cup I reduced sugar to 1 2/3 cups and used only one cup brown and the rest white. I patted half of the crumb mixture on the bottom of a 13x9 pan used my hands to "crumble" on the cranberry sauce (no need to spread really) evenly and sprinkled on the rest of the oat mixture on top. I threw in some dried cranberries for texture with the jellied cranberry and topped the whole thing off with 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips. They were AWESOME! No eggs or milk so its great for restricted diets next I will try it with even less sugar.
I agree that these hold together MUCH better if you press half the oat mixture into the pan first and put the cranberry in the middle. Very tasty. Scale to 2/3 and it fits very nicely into an 8 inch square pan.
As written these are too sweet and full of butter! I read some of the reviews before making it but its been a while... anyway after it cooled off the butter reabsorbed but holy butter when I took it out of the oven! Good thing I don't need my cholesterol checked this week!.... seriously they are good but I would halve the butter and halve or 1/4 the sugar. You do not need that much! And thats why they only get 3 stars in my book. However I did like how the sugar carmelized. Kinda nice and I've never had a cobbler/cookie do that. I made as written although I toyed with making like cookies as others have. I used a 8x8 pan instead of 9x13 bc I like cobblers and cookies that way. I may make this again but definitely not with that amount of butter or sugar!
This was a great find. I loved this back in the 50's but had never had anything like it since! The second time I made them I layered the cranberry sauce into the center which eliminated the gooey bottom and improved the texture and "fingerability". Everyone that tried them wanted the recipe. I also added chopped walnuts too.
I used this recipe to finish up some leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. (I made about a 1/2 portion of the recipe in a 8x8 glass baking dish.) It came out of the oven about an hour ago and I've already sneaked 2 little squares! They taste good! I did the same process as many split the crumbs to be half on the bottom half on top. I probably would even put just a little more on the bottom to give the squares a little more strength as you pick them up. I cut the butter down to a little more than half and that worked out fine. I also added some dried cranberries to the cranberry sauce and I'm glad I did. I wound up with a very thin layer of cranberry sauce when I spread it on but it turned out to be more than enough. I wouldn't consider increasing the amount of sauce. So far they taste GREAT warm but they need to cool some more before I officially cut them into squares. (edited to add: About half of them were stuck to the bottom of the pan so I only got about 8 small squares and the rest was more "crumbly". Would line iwth aluminum foil next time.)
I added 2 cans of cranberry otherwise it was spread too thin in the pan. I brought them to a staff meeting - everyone thought they were great!
Very good but sticky! Beware... I would recommend using non-stick wax paper or non-stick aluminum foil to line to pan with because otherwise it is difficult to remove the pieces without them falling apart.
My husband loves these! And he almost never likes a dessert made with fruit.
If you like cranberry this recipe is excellent. I added the two cans of cranberry (one jellied and one whole cranberries) and layered it between the oat mixure as suggested by other reviewers. This made a great tasting dish but I would not advise using two cans of cranberry if you actually want bars that can be easily cut and handled. This method produces more of a cranberry crisp. It was very good with vanilla ice cream!
