Blueberry Almond Bars

These tasty fruit-topped bars, made using this recipe from Dan Lepard, are a good way of stretching a little fruit to feed several people.

The recipe, although simple enough to follow, is quite time consuming and uses a lot of equipment - a saucepan for each of the two upper layers plus a bowl for the base, as well as mixing and weighing utensils.

The results were delicious, but rather fragile. The base was quite crumbly and the almond topping stayed soft and sticky. Although this gave some lovely contrasts of texture, it made the bars difficult to cut and handle, and they needed eating with a fork.

The almond layer was very sweet and tasted of caramel, but this sweetness was offset by the tartness of the fruit and the plainness of the bottom layer, which was a cross between a shortbread and a cake.