CHERRY SQUARES

Just a little aside, I went to the grocery store today and had such a taste for laberka (that's what we called it when we were kids, God only knows how to spell it. There is a rolled r in there somewhere) its really liverwurst and that just started me thinking about my Gramma.She was the best baker on earth  and one of my favorite things to eat when I was there was ,something she called cherry squares. OMG these things were the best.  Whenever I stayed at her house I would ask her to make them and believe it or not she did!! She never told me no I don't have time, or pick something else I don't have the ingredients. She found a way even if we had to walk to the store to get the ingredients.  Isn't it funny my Gramma never played video games with me or took me to amusement parks or gave me huge presents, but she was the best Gramma ever to me.  I knew she loved me just by looking into her face.  Now that I am a gramma why do I think I have to do all those other things with my grandkids?  I think they will love me just for being their Gramma and by the way my gramma could hardly walk, but she was always there for me.

The last time I visited my Mom I looked through her recipe book, OMG what a nightmare that was.  She has this book even older than the black and white marble composition books that you cant rip the pages out of cause the nuns at school would kill you.  This thing was an old 8 x 8 inch brown tablet with a black binding and it probably had about 25 sheets of white paper in it. My Mom of course had all the pages filled in with recipes she hand wrote but the tablet is now about 5 inches high held together with a rubber band with tons or recipes she cut out of magazines or the newspaper and just stuffed em inside the notebook put the rubberband around it and that was that. It took forever to find it.  When I did there were no instructions about how to mix, is the butter cold or soft, or anything that resembles a normal recipe just the ingredients and how long to bake the stuff. This will be an experiment.

Best as I can figure this is the recipe for the crust.

2 cups flour
1 cup butter
6 tablespoons of powdered sugar

I am going to cut the butter in with a pastry blender and then hopefully  press it down into a 13 x 9 pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Next make the filling

4 eggs slightly beaten (I just used a fork and whipped them up a little)
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups of walnuts chopped
1 cup of coconut
1 cup of maraschino cherries (drain the juice off you don't need it)

Ok so first I put the sugar and the beaten eggs into my mixing bowl.  I used one whole jar of maraschino cherries which i probably should have bought two jars cause I ate some and now I dont have a full cup!! Oh well I'm just gonna go with that and cut them up into quarters. While the eggs were mixing with the sugar I added the flour and baking soda, mixed them in and then added the walnuts, coconut and folded in the cherries last. Wow my fingers are all red!

You can see that this a really thick batter.  You don't have to let the bottom cool first just take it out of the over and pour on the batter. It will be hard to spread and of course the pan will be hot.  I used a flat spatula to spread the filling  and I  sprayed the spatula with pam first.  It really wasn't as hard to spread as I thought it would be. Then put it back in the oven for 30 minutes.  After it cools sprinkle some sifted confectioners sugar over it,  This is seriously good stuff!!