Feeling fancy with my sugared basil leaves over here. Pinkies up! # 399: Blueberry Basil Bars

Alliteration makes everything taste better, right? Blueberry basil jam on a buttery shortbread crust, topped with sparkly sugared basil leaves.

Every Airbnb we stayed at in Scotland gave us shortbread as a welcome gift (honestly the dream) and I brought a package home to stick in the freezer for a future bake. Welcome to the future!

Throwback to the last time I snuck basil into a jam but paired it with blackberries instead. It’s got such a subtle almost floral flavor (when not mixed into garlicky cheesy goodness of course) that it complements the more mellow berries. Not raspberries though – they would absolutely challenge basil to a flavor duel that the herb would lose spectacularly.

Such a bright and happy mise en place!

Feels a bit like sacrilege to crumble all those lovely cookies, but we’re essentially just creating one giant cookie with toppings so they’ll be back in all their glory shortly.

Adjustable pan swooping in to make my tiny 3×5” bake dreams come true!

Sugar and acid (lemon juice) for science and chopped basil confetti for fun.

Simmering jam subtitles: Blub blub blub.

My carb-obsessed heart demands a skewed crust to jam ratio.

I skipped the classic option for sugared flowers since I didn’t want to waste an egg white for a handful of basil leaves. Luckily simple syrup works perfectly as a glue alternative!

It took some practice to get a thin even layer of sugar on each leaf but we got there in the end. Trick is to really pat the leaves dry after dunking them in the syrup, even if it feels counterintuitive.

If I had done a little army of basil leaves I could have covered the top with these “flowers” but I only had one good set of three and the one flower looked lonely.

Bonus ridiculousness because her eyes really do look like blueberries 🫐

Happy munching!