Strawberry Almond Bars(GF/V)

Bake: 350 Yield: 18 bars (one 13x9 pan)

The batch I made was vegan, but you can easily sub in butter instead.

1 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 cups almond flour
2 cups flour blend (I used King Arthur GF Flour Blend, but use your favorite)
1/4 cup coconut flour
1 tsp salt
*Optional: 1 tsp of a binder like xantham gum, guar gum, or psyllium husk powder (if your flour mix doesn’t have any of these things already in it, it is advised to add a binder)
An 8oz jar of your favorite jam or jelly.

Directions

Cream shortening and brown sugar until well mixed and a little fluffy.
Add extracts and salt, and cream again.
Mix your flours together (and your binder if you’re using it) and add this a little at a time to your sugar mixture.
Incorporate the flour until it forms into balls the size of peas, and will make a solid form if you squeeze some in your hand.
In a baking dish lined with parchment paper, press about half the dough mixture. You may need to use a little more, and that’s ok, you want to make sure you have a good crust. Once the base dough is set, spread a jar of jam all over it. I used strawberry jelly, but you can use whatever you’d prefer. Marmalade would also be good here. (orange marmalade with a dark chocolate drizzle on top of these would be great….)
For the remaining dough, don’t press it but sprinkle it over the top like a struesel topping.

Bake at 350 for 25-27 min. let it cool completely and then pick it up out of the pan using the parchment paper. (You can skip the parchment paper, but you may have a hard time getting the bars out of the pan because the jelly layer turns into very sticky cement.)