Chewy oats, sweet gooey caramel, tart cranberries, and salty pecans come together in these perfectly delicious Cranberry Caramel Bars. Take this colorful dessert bar to your next potluck or just share them with friends this fall.
Cranberry Caramel Bars Recipe
These bars have a wonderful flavor, a sweet treat with just enough cranberry twang! Old fashioned oats give these bars a chewy texture and caramel sauce ties everything together. These bars transport nicely, just put waxed paper in between layers in a covered container.
Ingredients you will need
- For the crust and topping: flour, baking soda, old fashioned oats, sugar, brown sugar, butter
- For the layers: cranberries, dates, pecans, caramel sauce
Helpful baking tools
How to Make Cranberry Caramel Bars
Start by preheating the oven to 350 F. Line a 13×9 baking pan with aluminum foil, leaving a little overhang so you can lift bars out later. Lightly grease the foil.
- Combine 2 tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl with the cranberries and set aside.
- Combine 2 cups of flour and the next four ingredients.
- Stir in melted butter until crumbly. Reserve 1 cup of this mixture and set aside.
- Press remaining mixture into bottom of the baking dish. Bake for 15 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and sprinkle with dates, pecans, and the cranberry mixture.
- Stir the caramel sauce and the remaining 1/3 cup flour together until smooth, spoon over cranberries.
- Sprinkle with the reserved 1 cup flour mixture. Bake an additional 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Cool on a wire rack. Lift out of pan with foil overhang. Cut into bars.
Hope you enjoy these caramel cranberry bars as much as we do around here. These make a great hostess gift for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
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Cranberry Caramel Bars
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Print It Rate ItIngredients
- 1 cup fresh cranberries
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour divided
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 cups uncooked old fashioned oats
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar firmly packed
- 1 cup unsalted butter melted
- 10 ounce package chopped dates
- 3/4 cup pecans chopped
- 12 ounce caramel sauce jarred
Things You'll Need
Instructions
- Start by preheating the oven to 350 F. Line a 13x9 baking pan with aluminum foil, leaving a little overhang so you can lift bars out later. Lightly grease the foil.
- Combine 2 tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl with the cranberries and set aside.
- Combine 2 cups of the flour, baking soda, oats, sugar, and brown sugar.
- Stir in melted butter until crumbly. Reserve 1 cup of this mixture and set aside.
- Press remaining mixture into bottom of the baking dish. Bake for 15 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and sprinkle with dates, pecans, and the cranberry mixture.
- Stir the caramel sauce and the remaining 1/3 cup flour together until smooth, spoon over cranberries.
- Sprinkle with the reserved 1 cup flour mixture. Bake an additional 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
- Cool on a wire rack. Lift out of pan with foil overhang. Cut into bars.
Expert Tips & FAQs
Nutrition
This post originally appeared here on Nov 7, 2008.
Amanda Formaro
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Lara says
Great recipe! I made it for a cookie exchange party and it was a hit. For my batch, I added probably half a cup of extra cranberries just because I felt like it needed more color. I also forgot to grab a jar of caramel sauce when I was at the store, so I whipped up a batch of the oh-so-easy caramel sauce from All Recipes. The quantity that recipe made was perfect to replace the jarred stuff, and I mixed in the 1/3 c flour and followed the other instructions here like normal. The only other thing I changed was to bake the whole thing for about 40-45 minutes (instead of 20) in step 8. It never really browned on top, but the bake time tasted right in the final product. I’d make these again in a heartbeat.
Robin says
I have been making these since the mid 1980’s when Diamond Walnuts and Oceanspray put this recipies out.
The original recipie called for chopped walnuts.
I prefer them over pecans .
So you can use either. I actually use more cranberries, dates and nuts then the recipie calls for!
Jude says
Nice recipe.. It will be easy to convince myself that these are healthy and I won’t feel so guilty about eating a whole sheet pan.
mimi says
these look terrific, i love how the cranberries pop out in color!
Maria says
The bars look delicious! I love the color too!
Bunny says
I love your close up pictures they look so good! I’ve never baked with cranberries.
Aggie says
OH these look great!! Wow, I wish I had one right now!
Marie says
If these are even half as tasty as they look they must be mighty dangerous to have around! Delicious!
Debbie says
The bars look great – nice and chewy!!!
Lisa says
The sweet caramel with the tangy cranberries sounds delicious.
The Food Librarian says
Beautiful!!!
The Blonde Duck says
I love cranberries! These look divine.