Easy Cherry Pie Bars

Mother's Day. I cooked Lourdes a feast at her house — pork sinigang, garlic rice, lumpia, halo-halo. Angela came with the kids. I cooked Lourdes a feast. I gave Lourdes a card I had written by hand. She read it twice. She put it in her apron pocket. The apron knows.

Lourdes is 74. She is in the kitchen. She is luminous.

I made cassava cake Saturday. The grated cassava, the coconut milk, the slow bake. The cake that holds Iloilo in it.

I wrote the blog post Friday night at the kitchen table while Reyna napped on the couch. The post was short. The post was honest.

Pete texted me Saturday. He retired three years ago. He still texts me Saturday. The friendship is the broth.

The light was good Saturday morning. I sat on the porch with a cup of coffee and watched the inlet for forty minutes. The watching was the small therapy. The therapy was free.

I made coffee at six AM. The coffee was the start. The start was always the same.

I drove home Tuesday evening and the sun set at three forty-five and the highway was already iced at the bridges and the radio was on a station I did not recognize and I did not change it.

I checked email at the kitchen table while the rice cooked. There were one hundred and twenty unread messages. I closed the laptop. The unread can wait.

Lourdes called me twice this week. The first call was about a church event. The second was about a recipe variation she had remembered from her childhood. The remembering was the gift.

Angela texted me a photo of the kids. I texted back a heart. The exchange took thirty seconds. The thirty seconds was the keeping.

Auntie Norma called Sunday afternoon. She is now seventy-nine. She wanted a recipe. I gave it to her. She wanted to know how my week was. I told her, briefly. She told me about her week. The exchange took eighteen minutes. The eighteen minutes was the keeping.

The salmon in the freezer is from August. Joseph's catch. The bag is labeled in his handwriting — "for Grace." I will use it next week.

The grocery store had no calamansi. I substituted lime. The substitution was acceptable. The acceptable is the working version of perfect.

I sat on the balcony in the cold for ten minutes Sunday night with a cup of broth in my hands. The cold was the cold. The broth was the broth. The body held both.

The neighbors invited us over for a small dinner Thursday. They are an Iñupiaq family — Aana and her grandson Joe. We ate caribou stew and rice. I brought lumpia. The kitchens of Anchorage have always been the small UN. The food is the proof.

I read three chapters of the novel Saturday night before sleep. The novel was about a Filipina nurse in California. The nurse was being undone by her work. I knew the unraveling. I had lived the unraveling. I read on. The reading was the witnessing.

I drove the Glenn Highway out to Eklutna on Saturday. The mountains were the mountains. The lake was the lake. The body needed the open road. The open road did its work.

Auntie Norma called Sunday to ask if I had a recipe for a particular merienda from Iloilo. I did not. I said I would ask Lourdes. I asked Lourdes. Lourdes had it. The chain.

Pete and I had a long phone conversation Tuesday. We talked about the family — his and mine. The talking was the keeping.

The cassava cake was for Saturday — for Lourdes, for Iloilo, for the kind of memory that lives in a specific texture and smell. But the week kept asking for something to pass around, something that travels in a container and lands on a neighbor’s table without ceremony. These cherry pie bars are that. Simple, honest, shareable — the kind of thing you bring to Aana’s house or leave on Pete’s porch, the kind of thing that asks nothing back except that someone eats it while it’s still good.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 24 bars

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 cans (21 oz each) cherry pie filling
1 cup powdered sugar (for glaze)
2–3 tablespoons milk (for glaze)
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (for glaze)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 10x15-inch jelly roll pan (or a 9x13 for thicker bars) with butter or nonstick spray.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat softened butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3–4 minutes. Scrape down the sides as needed.
Add eggs and extracts. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and almond extracts. Mix until smooth and well combined.
Mix in flour and salt. Add flour and salt to the butter mixture. Stir until a soft, thick batter forms — it will be denser than cake batter, closer to a cookie dough in texture.
Layer the base. Spread about two-thirds of the batter evenly across the bottom of the prepared pan using a spatula or lightly floured hands.
Add cherry filling. Spoon both cans of cherry pie filling evenly over the batter layer, spreading gently to the edges.
Add the top layer. Drop the remaining batter in small spoonfuls over the cherry filling. It will not cover completely — that is fine. The top will spread slightly during baking.
Bake. Bake for 30–35 minutes, until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted into the dough portion comes out clean. Let cool completely in the pan before glazing.
Make the glaze. Whisk together powdered sugar, milk (start with 2 tablespoons), and almond extract until smooth and pourable. Add the third tablespoon of milk if needed to reach a drizzle consistency.
Glaze and cut. Drizzle glaze over the cooled bars. Allow glaze to set for 10 minutes, then cut into bars and serve. Store covered at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Cherry Pie Bars — The Sweet That Stays When the Feast Is Done