Dark Brown Sugar Strawberry Pretzel Shortbread is a sweet and salty treat made with a buttery pretzel and dark brown sugar shortbread base, filled with a luscious layer of strawberry jam, topped with more crumbled shortbread and baked until perfectly golden and crisp.
This is a super easy dessert inspired by this Strawberry Pretzel Dessert. I love how the crust of that dessert bakes up kind of crisp and has this amazing texture thanks to the pretzel so I decided to try making an easy to ship shortbread version for my step dad’s birthday.
I love how this came out. It is hard to describe how much flavor and texture the ground pretzels add to the shortbread, but I think all my shortbread from now on might be pretzel shortbread. The slightly salty and buttery shortbread pairs perfectly with sweet strawberry jam, and I could eat WAY too many of these. You could fill these with other flavors of jam as well, although I think strawberry is perfect here.
I use so many of the precut parchment paper pieces in my baking and cooking. They make it super easy to remove bars like this from the pan before cutting them and also make for super easy clean up of your baking pans. Hope you give these bars a try as I know you will love them. Check out my many other dessert recipes here.
Dark Brown Sugar Strawberry Pretzel Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter cut into pieces (2 sticks)
- 2/3 cup dark brown sugar
- 1 1/2 cup pretzels ground in a food processor
- 1 1/2 cups AP flour
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup strawberry jam approx, you can use more or less as desired
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 and line an 8×8 pan with parchment and spray it with oil spray or bakers joy.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter, vanilla and brown sugar on medium speed, scraping the bowl and paddle as needed until you have a mostly smooth mixture. It is ok to start with cold butter here and it actually helps the shortbread have great flakiness. You don't need the butter to be fully creamed like you would want it for buttercream or cake.
- Add the flour and pretzel crumbs and mix on low until combined. Use your hands or a spatula to do the final bit of mixing.
- Press 1/2 of the dough into a layer in the bottom of the pan, using your fingers to spread it out evenly. Top with the jam and spread it out over the shortbread. If the jam seems a little thin you can add a bit more. Drop clumps of remaining dough on top and lightly spread them out. You don't need to fully cover the jam.
- Place in the oven and bake for 20 min, then rotate and bake another 15-20 minutes until the shortbread is browning lightly and is fully set. Remove and cool completely, then cut into squares. These keep at room temp and you can also freeze them after cutting.