Glazed Almond Bars
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When you need a festive sweet treat to bring to a holiday gathering but don’t have the time or patience to fiddle with decorating fancy cookies, these glazed almond bars can come to the rescue. They are always loved and gobbled up quickly any time I bring them to a Christmas party!
I’ve had this recipe for many years but it’s not a recipe that I make just any old time. I usually reserve these bars for the holidays or other special occasions, kind of like how I don’t make fudge unless it’s Christmas. These bars are rich, decadent treats that I cut into small pieces and they make a wonderful addition to a plate of goodies you might want to gift to someone too.
Another reason I only make this recipe during the holidays is because the important ingredient of almond paste is not always easy to find in the grocery stores. But sometimes during the holidays I can find it much more easily, and sometimes it will even be in the main aisle with other featured baking ingredients.
Sometimes I can find the boxes (or sometimes cans) of almond paste in my local “Dutch” store that imports many things from the Netherlands (because there’s still a lot of us Dutch folks here in my part of Michigan). I can also sometimes find this ingredient with other “International” items in larger stores. You can also find almond paste on Amazon (for a price of course), and if it gets to the point when I can’t find it, I have this article pinned on Pinterest with instructions on how to make my own almond paste (which I might just try for fun anyway!) If you’ve never worked with almond paste, it comes in a dense, soft lump of goodness that mixes in nicely to your baked goods.
Cooking with almond paste and almond flavorings is part of the Dutch tradition I’m descended from. I used to make these glazed almond bars every Christmas for one of my employers, and one year he asked, “Will you be making those almond bars again? You Dutch girls sure know how to bake with almond!” Well, thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.
You might also like to try:
- Almond Brownie Bars – uses almond extract instead of almond paste
- Brown Sugar Body Scrub – uses almond extract to add a lovely fragrance
Glazed Almond Bars
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter (softened)
- 1 pkg almond paste (8 oz size, or about 1 cup)
- 1-3/4 cups white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup slivered almonds
Ingredients for Glaze:
- 1 cup powdered sugar (confectioners sugar)
- 2 Tbl water
- 1 tsp almond extract
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and almond paste with an electric mixer. Then beat in the sugar and eggs.
- Next, mix in the flour and salt. The mixture will become thicker at this point and I usually switch from using my electric mixer to just mixing in the flour by hand.
- Finally, stir in the slivered almonds.
- Pat the mixture into a greased 9×13 pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until just starting to brown around the edges. Glaze the bars while still warm.
- To make the glaze, combine the powdered sugar, water, and almond extract in a small bowl. Pour the glaze over the warm bars. Let glaze harden up before cutting the bars into small squares.
Yes it is refrigerated there and at Gordon’s and Trader Joe’s too I believe.
I haven’t checked yet this holiday season, but in the past Meijer has sold 10 oz shrink wrap packages of almond paste. They were displayed near refrigerated cookie dough.
Thanks for that tip Judy – I will have to check out that area of my Meijer store.
If your from Grand Rapids, check out Horrocks! Sometimes they run specials in whole tubes of almond paste for a ridiculously low price!!!
Thanks so much for that tip Sherri! I never thought to look at Horrocks for almond paste, but I will definitely check it out now. Good info to know! 🙂