Recipe: Try My Three-Step Orange Bars With Candy-Like Icing When Making Your Holiday Cookies This Year

These orange bars are a cross between a pastry and candy.

Today, I have a really delicious bar cookie that you might want to try when doing your holiday baking.  My Three-Step Orange Bars recipe is relatively easy that involves just three steps.  This has a buttery pastry-like bottom crust.  The middle is a custard-like filling with walnuts, finely grated orange zest and shredded coconut flakes before finally being topped with a candy-like, orange confectioner’s sugar icing.  The icing is not your typical creamy butter cream, but a thicker one that hardens to give the bar more of a candy-like quality. 

I hope that you’ll be tempted to try my recipe because it is a very good one that always disappears quickly when guests arrive.  

These bars are delectable, but they also are sinfully rich.

My Three-Step Orange Bars

½ cup of butter, softened
1-1/3 cups of sifted flour
3 tablespoons of sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup of brown sugar, packed (light or dark)
3/4 cup of chopped walnuts
3/4 cup of shredded coconut flakes
1 tablespoon of grated orange zest

Candy-Like Icing:

2-1/2 cups of confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup of orange juice
1 teaspoon orange extract or 1 tablespoon of grated orange zest

Preheat your oven to 350-degrees. 

Mix the butter and flour with the 3 tablespoons of sugar into coarse crumbs as you would do for pastry dough.  

After you get that consistency, press into a 13 x 9 x 2-inches baking pan that is well-greased.

Bake this first layer of crust for about 15 minutes before removing from the oven.  Don’t turn it off because you’ll be returning it shortly to bake again once you prepare the custard filling.

To your mixing bowl, beat the eggs until frothy before slowly mixing in the brown sugar.  Continue beating and then incorporate the chopped walnuts and coconut flakes into the mixture.

Pour this custard filling over the baked crust and then return to the oven to continue baking for an additional 25 to 30 minutes, depending on how your oven is regulated.

Use a toothpick, cake tester or slender knife to check if anything sticks for determining if it is finished.

Cool completely before frosting with the icing.  The icing is a thicker one, more candy-like than creamy for these bars that does harden.  

ENJOY!