Cranberry-Orange Bars — The Orange Peel in Everything I Bake

The kitchen is the room I live in. The other rooms are storage for memories — the dining room with its china cabinet, the living room with Paul's shipwreck books, the upstairs bedrooms where the kids grew up and which I have not entered (except to dust) in years. The kitchen is where the present happens. The kitchen is where the food is made and the dog is fed and the morning begins and the evening ends. The kitchen is the entire territory of my daily life now, and I find that this is enough. Karin and I talked Sunday. Stockholm in winter is dark. Duluth in winter is dark. We compared darknesses. We laughed. Karin said: "Linda, do you remember the time Pappa drove us to Two Harbors in a blizzard because Mamma wanted lutefisk?" I said yes. The story unspooled across the phone for twenty minutes. I had forgotten half of it. Karin remembered all of it. The memory was, briefly, complete between us. Mamma's hands shake more than they did last month. I do not point it out. I notice. I notice everything. The shake is small — barely visible when she is at rest, more visible when she lifts her coffee cup, most visible when she is trying to thread a needle. She still threads needles. She still bakes. She still calls me on Tuesdays at 10. The hands shake. The shaking does not stop the doing. The doing is what Mamma is. I cooked Limpa bread this week. The Swedish rye. Caraway. Orange peel. Two rises. The constant of every season. Damiano. The kitchen back-room I have known for over twenty years. The pot. The ladle. The faces. Gerald. The work continues. The work is the same work it has been since 2005. The continuity is, I think, the gift the Damiano Center gives me as much as the gift I give it. We hold each other up. Erik's house is empty now. The Fifth Street house has been sold (the new owners are a young couple from Hermantown, they are kind, they have promised to take care of it; they will paint the walls and tear up the carpet and the kitchen will become someone else's kitchen and I have made my peace with this, mostly). Erik's own house in Lakeside is being cleared out. I helped on Saturday. I packed Erik's coffee mugs. I held one for a long minute. I put it in the box. It is enough. It has to be. And on a morning like this, with the lake doing what the lake does and the dog at my feet and the bread on the counter and the kitchen warm enough to live in, it is. I have been reading the Bible more lately. Not in any new way. The same passages I have known since confirmation class in 1977. The Sermon on the Mount. The 23rd Psalm. The book of Ruth. Whither thou goest, I will go. The repetition of the verses is its own form of prayer. The verses do not change. I change. The change is held by the unchanged words. I have learned, slowly, that there is a kind of competence that comes only with age. Not wisdom, exactly — wisdom is a word too grand for what I mean. Competence. The competence of having watched many things go wrong and many things go right and having developed an internal database of which is which. The competence is, perhaps, the only thing that improves with age in a body that is otherwise declining. I will take the trade. It is enough.

The orange peel goes into the Limpa, and the orange peel goes into these bars, and that is the connective thread I follow when I need one. I did not set out to bake two things in the same week, but the Limpa was for the bread box and these were for the Damiano kitchen — a sheet pan of something bright to bring alongside the soup, something that smelled like the holidays without requiring the holidays to mean anything particular right now. Cranberries are honest fruit. They do not pretend to be sweeter than they are. That felt right this week.

Cranberry-Orange Bars

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min plus cooling | Servings: 16 bars

Ingredients

• For the shortbread base:
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 1/4 tsp fine salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• For the cranberry-orange filling:
• 2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp fresh orange zest (from about 2 medium oranges)
• 3 tbsp fresh orange juice
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• For the orange glaze (optional):
• 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
• 2–3 tbsp fresh orange juice

Instructions

1. Preheat and prepare the pan. Heat oven to 350°F. Line an 8x8-inch baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides for easy lifting.
2. Make the shortbread base. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, powdered sugar, and salt. Add the cold butter cubes and work them in with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs and begins to clump when pressed.
3. Press and pre-bake the crust. Press the crumb mixture firmly and evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake for 15 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to turn golden. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes while you make the filling.
4. Prepare the cranberry filling. Coarsely chop the cranberries (a few pulses in a food processor works well, or chop by hand on a cutting board). In a medium bowl, stir together the chopped cranberries, granulated sugar, orange zest, and orange juice. Add the beaten eggs, flour, and baking powder and stir until fully combined.
5. Bake the bars. Pour the cranberry filling evenly over the warm pre-baked crust. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20–22 minutes, until the filling is set at the center and the edges are lightly golden. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out with moist crumbs, not wet batter.
6. Cool completely. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and allow to cool fully before glazing or slicing — at least 1 hour. The filling firms as it cools.
7. Make the glaze and finish. Whisk together the powdered sugar and orange juice until smooth and pourable. Drizzle over the cooled bars. Allow the glaze to set for 15 minutes, then lift the bars out using the parchment overhang, transfer to a cutting board, and cut into 16 squares.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 178 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 28g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 44mg