This dessert recipe for Cranberry Oatmeal Bars uses leftover cranberry sauce, canned or homemade. I know that it’s not quite cranberry sauce season yet. But when it is, you need to be ready for it with this amazing recipe!
My mom is one of the most innovative cooks I know. It was one of my mom’s great instincts that led to this recipe. Basically, what she did was to take her old recipe for Matrimonial Squares and substitute canned cranberry sauce for the dates.
What Are Matrimonial Squares?
Matrimonial Squares are the name used for Date Squares in parts of Canada. The reason for the matrimonial name seems to be that the two streusel-like layers are being brought together by the dates to solidify their relationship, like a couple getting married. Isn’t that amazing?
So, here’s how this recipe came about. My mom had an extra can of cranberry sauce left after a Thanksgiving dinner. Somehow, she then had the brilliant idea to use the sauce in place of the dates in her classic Matrimonial Squares recipe. Deliciousness was born!
How These Cranberry Oatmeal Bars Were Born
This easy dessert recipe hits so many amazing flavor and texture components – sweet, tart, rich, crunchy, soft, and chewy. It’s got it all. The best thing about these cranberry oatmeal bars, besides their taste and ease, is that they’re a great use for leftover cranberry sauce. You can use sauce from a can or make Homemade Cranberry Sauce.
Once Thanksgiving rolls past and you find yourself with some of that sauce leftover in a bowl, or an extra can on hand (because you forgot to open it and put it out with the turkey, which happens to me every second year), don’t fret and wonder what to do with it. Make these oatmeal bars. You’ll love them.
If you don’t have the amount of cranberry sauce called for in the oatmeal bars recipe below, you can absolutely supplement with jam of any kind. Or open another can of cranberry sauce and combine it with your leftovers since these bars can happily accommodates more filling.
If you’re looking for more ways to use up cranberry sauce, check out my list of ideas for what to do with leftover cranberry sauce .
NOTE: There were many comments on this recipe that were wonderful, and many that found the oat mixture to not have enough butter or be difficult to work with. I figured out that I was explaining things incorrectly, and that softened butter is easier to use for this than cold butter. I have therefore edited the recipe to use the easier softened butter and to explain how to work the butter into the dry ingredients. I hope this helps everyone enjoy this recipe more. It’s one of my true all-time favorites and I hope you end up loving it as much as we do.
Have a great day! -Christine
Print
Cranberry Oatmeal Bars
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 22 minutes
- Total Time: 32 minutes
- Yield: 24 bars 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
DESCRIPTION
This twist on the classic Matrimonial Squares (also called Date Squares) uses cranberry sauce as a filling instead of a date purée. They’re super easy to make and are a fabulous use for leftover cranberry sauce. Note that this recipe originally called for cold butter but I have retested it and it now uses softened butter, which is much easier to work into the dry ingredients. The taste of the finished bars are not affected by this change. Enjoy!
Listen to me explain briefly about how to make these bars, with some great tips along the way, by clicking the play button below:
Ingredients
- 2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
- 2 cups all-purpose flour*
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 (14 oz.) can whole berry cranberry sauce or 1 and 1/2 cups homemade cranberry sauce
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350ºF.
- In a large bowl mix together the oats, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Add the softened butter and stir well. Once it’s fairly well mixed, use your fingers to get under everything and make sure that all of the oat mixture is moistened with butter.
- Spoon three-quarters of the oat mixture into an ungreased 13″x 9″ cake pan. Press down on it firmly everywhere to form a solid layer that evenly covers the bottom of the pan. You can press it where it’s thicker in places to help spread it more evenly as well.
- Add the cranberry sauce in dollops and spread it in a thin layer over the oat layer.
- Sprinkle with the remaining oat mixture, breaking it into small 1/4 inch bits as you let it fall. Press down lightly on the oats so that they adhere to the wet cranberry sauce a bit.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes. Note that the topping will not change color but it is still done.
- Allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack. Cut into 8 strips along the length of the pan and 3 strips along the width yielding 24 bars. Use a spatula to remove the bars from the pan.
Notes
*Using half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose white flour works as well.
This post was originally published in November, 2013. It has been revised many times and is now being republished in July, 2022.
Delicious!! I combined a bit of peach preserves w a very tart home made cranberry sauce = perfect.
I also added some good dark chocolate on top of half the pan, when hot, to test. Fabulous!!
Wow, that sounds amazing, Paula! Thank you for letting us know!
Can you use I can’t believe it’s not butter instead of unsalted butter?
You should be able to do a 1:1 substitution of that, Erin, though I haven’t tried it myself. Let us know how it goes!
These are so good. Used my leftover homemade cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I had more than 1 1/2c sauce – more like 2c and I went ahead and used it all. Also used 1/2c softened butter and 1/2c vegetable oil because I didn’t have much butter. Worked great! My daughter and I couldn’t wait and ate a couple pieces warm. Yum!
Delicious! Thanks for sharing with us, Kristin!
I changed a couple things I took dried cranberry soaked them in hot water for 20 mins and used 2 rip bananas instead of the cranberry sauce. Amazing. We heat up and put icecream ontop
Thanks for sharing your adjustments with us, Joanne!
I made half the batch with gluten free ingredients. The problem I encountered was that I could not spread well the cranberry jelly over the base. So, I cut up the jelly in as thin pieces as I could and spread them out. Although it tastes good, it is not as firm as I would like it, a bit too sweet, and has a funny look as you can see the shapes of the slices through the crumble. Overall, I would make it again.
Further to my comments.
The gluten free base in case -anyone is wondering:
HALF BATCH:
1 cup quick oats (Only Oats, I did not have rolled oat)
1/2 cup cassava flour (Anthony’s)
1/2 cup mystery flour (probably better batter by Nicole Hunn at glutenfreeonashoestring.com )
1/2cup brown rice (Bob’s Red Mill).
Next time I may reduce each -the cassava flour and the brown rice to 1/4 cup each. Now that the crust has cooled off, I like the bars- I think that if I had pressed the base harder, they would had been perfect. A bit on the soft side, also because I used a whole can of jellied cranberries in a half a batch recipe.
Thanks so much for sharing your base recipe and giving such detailed feedback, Adriana!
I tried this today. I read through the comments first and decided to offset the sugar I would heat the canned cranberry sauce and add the remaining partial bag of cranberries I had in the freezer, along w 1/4 tsp orange extract. I heated it all until they popped open.
I made the crust in the food processor and it worked fabulous!
The heated sauce was easy to spread over the base. The crumble on top was wonderful.
The sweet-tart balance was perfect and the crust had a good buttery flavor. Our whole family liked it.
I’ll definitely make again!
Thanks for sharing your process with us, Andrea! So glad it was a hit.
I followed the directions almost exactly and the cranberry bars were delicious! I added chopped pecans to the top streusel. They were quite crumbly but firmed up much better in the refrigerator. I probably would prefer a more solid (less crumbly–perhaps a shortbread?) bottom crust if I were to take them somewhere as finger treats, but it was a great recipe and my family loved them. I would make them again.
Sounds fantastic, Cindi!
Found this recipe because I was googling how to use extra Cranberry sauce and I’m glad I did! It was easy and delicious. I made this vegan by subbing in softened vegan butter. Very tasty and made our forgotten Cranberry sauce the star of breakfast!
That’s fantastic, Leah! Glad it didn’t go to waste.
This is such a great recipe. I’ve made it twice since Thanksgiving and it’s turned out fantastic every time. My husband and I love it! We also like to store them in the fridge when not eating them to let everything really set together. I also like to top my bar with a little whipped cream before eating. So good! :)
Having left over cranberry sauce, I stumbled upon this recipe and decided to give it a try!
My kids loved them!! I served it with yogurt in a bowl (less messy with toddlers)
the sides did turn out crumbly but we really enjoyed it.
Thank you for sharing this simple but tasty recipe.
Will try with jam next time since the kids are asking for more!
That’s wonderful! Glad it was a hit with the kids.
I made them and they are delicious. Need a little more cook time to firm them up. I worked the softened butter in the dry ingredients well. Will make again.
Great, Shirley! So happy you enjoyed.
I made these easy and tasty bars today with leftover homemade cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving! They were DELICIOUS!! I let it cool slightly and just had to try a small piece, since they smelled soooo good and I honestly couldn’t wait to try them! My cranberry sauce was tart, so it paired well with the sweetness of the brown sugar. If it wasn’t tart, I would probably cut back on the brown sugar. I used 2 cups of cranberry sauce, that’s what I had left, and it worked out well! I have read quite a few comments about the difficulty of incorporating the butter into the flour/brown sugar mixture and I used my food processor to “blend” the butter into the flour. I had added the flour, brown sugar etc., into the food processor. I have to tell you that in the middle of assembling everything, I got distracted and actually forgot to add the baking powder, salt and baking soda and they still tasted delicious!! The butter was very cold (almost frozen) but I was able to cut it into “cubes” and added it into the top of the processor (in the “chute”) and pulsed it while pushing the butter “cubes” into the flour mixture. I just kept pulsing until the mixture came together. It was very easy and everything was incorporated nicely. I then followed the rest of the recipe, pressing the “crust” in the pan and so on!! I have more cranberries in my freezer and will definitely be making this again! Thank you again for sharing your recipe!! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Thank you for sharing how you handled the process, Lina. Glad you enjoyed enough to make again!
Just made this recipe as written, and they are delicious!! They were still a bit too soft after 25 min so I did end up baking for 35. They also freeze beautifully – I just pop a frozen bar in my toaster oven to warm them up again. Yum!
Wonderful! Thanks for the tip about freezing.
Making these as I type this. I made homemade cranberry jelly for Thanksgiving and saw this recipe and decided to give it a try. I’m hoping it turns out good!!
Enjoy, Stephanie!
This is delicious, people are funny about adding eggs and all this other stuff saying the consistency is wrong… they are similar granola bars, it’s not a cake!! With that being said…. What a workout for your hands!… it is difficult to get the butter all mixed in….. I used the paddle on my stand up mixer and alternated between letting that go and doing it by hand… it made it so much easier and worked great. So delicious and a good thing to have on hand for an on-the-go breakfast
Thanks for the feedback, Jennifer!
Jennifer, I recently tested the recipe with softened butter instead of cold and it worked perfectly. I have changed the recipe above to reflect that. With the softened butter it is MUCH easier to work into the dry ingredients, and since we’re not trying to get a flaky pastry crust or anything like that, the butter temperature doesn’t seem to matter. Thanks for your comment and I’m so happy you liked the recipe.
FYI if you use instant oats or quick oats and not old fashioned oats it will act as flour and the result will be dry and crumbly. Might be why it didn’t work out for some people. Mine were great!
Thank you for the input, Wendy!
The basic flour – butter ratio seems to be off. It results in a base that doesn’t properly form (just all crumbly) as the amount of fat is far too low to bind properly with the flour and oats. It also effects the streusel topping, which turned out just like the base – far too crumbly because of not enough fat (butter). I suspected this would happen when I read the ingredient list, but reading the other positive reviews, decided to stay true to the recipe. Sorry, but this was a disappointment.
CookinVictoria, This recipe was my mom’s and she has made it at least 30 times and I have made it at least 20 times, and it has a lot of great comments on it too. So when I read your comment I was confused. There has been the odd negative comment before but most have been positive, or exuberant even. So I decided to make a new batch to resolve my confusion once and for all. I happened to have a can of cranberry sauce and some oats so it was easy enough.
The recipe worked perfectly. The bars turned out great and everyone at my house likes them. However, as I was making the recipe I realized something. The original instruction said to rub the cold butter into the flour mixture until butter pieces are no bigger than the oats. That was completely incorrect and I think I was writing out of habit because a lot of other recipes (like for pastry and other crusts) that use cut up cold butter use that phrasing.
Instead, what I actually do, and what I should have written, is to rub the butter into the flour until it is completely gone. That is, until your fingers have essentially melted it and rubbed it until it is actually coating the flour particles and oats. You shouldn’t be able to see any specks of butter. I have edited the instructions in the above recipe to say that. I suspect that the problem was that too much of the dry ingredients didn’t have fat on them, so those patches in the crust ended up crumbly due to not being bound together.
Note, I’m going to try making the recipe again next week using softened butter. I think that will be much easier to work into the dry ingredients, and it will ensure that nobody (me or anyone) thinks that the butter is supposed to be in small pieces, like for pastry, when it is actually meant to be fully incorporated. I might also try it using melted butter. I guess it depends on if we get sick of cranberry bars or not!
Thank you for your feedback. My sincere apologies for the recipe not turning out.
This is the tastiest way to use up cranberry sauce leftovers, but mine came out entirely too sweet for my family. Next time I’ll be cutting way back on the brown sugar.
Thanks for letting us know, Susan!
Like Lisa, this recipe didn’t work out for me. Luckily I was able to salvage it by mixing in 2 eggs and some vanilla.
Sorry to hear that, Janet.
It’s recipes like this that make me happy to have cranberries in my freezer year ’round.
Me too, Heather! I like to get a few extra bags during the holidays so they are waiting when the craving hits! :)