Cranberry Bliss Bars ~ Similar to Starbucks

First, a disclaimer ~  actually I don't frequent Starbucks and I haven't had a bite of their Cranberry Bliss Bars, but this is a clone that has been floating around on the Internet for several years.

It's a soft cookie-like bar (similar to a brownie in texture), with chopped dried cranberries, white chocolate chunks ~or morsels, a little ginger, and sweetened with brown sugar.

After reading several reviews of the recipe, I took some suggestions from others and made a few tweaks of my own.

  I'm not a fan of overly sweet desserts so for the frosting I doubled the amount of cream cheese and  reduced the amount of powdered sugar in the frosting by half, and used a combination of orange extract, almond extract and vanilla to flavor it. 

Instead of ground ginger in the batter for the bars I finely diced some candied crystallized ginger to bump the flavor up a bit, and used orange extract and vanilla extract instead of lemon.

One reviewer mentioned that Starbuck's drizzle on top is melted white chocolate rather than the much sweeter powdered sugar drizzle so I followed that tip as well using melted white chocolate instead. 

The results?  It received solid thumbs up at my house and I would make this again.

(Although definitely reserved as a once-in-a-while, special treat!)

If you would like a printable copy of the original recipe, and my changes you'll find it on the Once Upon a Plate Recipe Blog by clicking HERE.

Thank you for stopping by today, and any comments or thoughts you would like to share.  xo~m.