Pineapple Filled Bars

This will have you dreaming of Hawaii. It's one of my favorite bars ever and I've been making it for years. Here's the header from the recipe: There is a thick layer of pineapple which gives this its flavor and helps to keep it moist. Freezes well! This is from one of my first Company's Coming cookbooks I purchased (in 1981) called 150 Delicious Squares by Jean Pare. She puts together some of the best cookbooks I've ever seen. I've rarely had a failure with any of her recipes and because of that I've gone on to purchase many of her subsequent cookbooks. Lucky for me the original recipe is totally vegan and very easy to make. Make two pans of pineapple filled bars -- one to tuck in the freezer (for the upcoming festive season) and one to sample. I'm almost sure this will become one of your new favorites too!

Recipe
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup hard margarine
(such as Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks)
1/8 tsp. salt
1-1/2 cups shredded coconut

3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 cup crushed pineapple with juice
1 tbsp. margarine
3 tbsp. cornstarch

Bottom layer: Mix first 5 ingredients together until crumbly. Spread about 2/3 in greased 9x9 pan. Set aside.

Filling: Stir next 5 ingredients together in saucepan. Bring to a boil while stirring over medium heat. Cool slightly. Spread over bottom layer. Cover with remaining crumbs pressing down with your hand. Bake in 350F oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown in color. Cut while warm into desired number of squares but let cool completely before removing squares from pan for best results.

Veggie Prairie Girl Rambles
I have made this recipe using oat instead of wheat flour. It would probably also lend itself very well to using the pre-packaged gluten-free flour mixes on the market. The cookie base of this recipe is very sweet -- if you prefer less sweet I'd try cutting down the brown sugar to 3/4 cup and adding an extra 1/4 cup flour in it's place so you don't end up with less mixture in total. You can also cut another 1/4 cup sugar from the filling. That should help quite a bit as that would be a total of 1/2 cup you are eliminating from the entire recipe. If you can find your crushed pineapple in 8 oz cans that's perfect for this recipe -- I used to be able to at one time. I'll have to check Save-On Foods as I think that is where I found them a few years ago. I used the Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks and I think I could get away with using slightly less than the 1/2 cup (next time I plan to try with 2 tablespoons less). I'll update here when I do and let you know if it's a go or a no! I used the Let's Do Organics finely shredded unsweetened coconut. If you haven't had organic coconut without sulphites before you'll be surprised at the color -- no snow white happening here -- it's a kinda of creamy vanilla color. If you click on the photo above you'll get a close-up of the crystal goblet -- it contains the organic coconut of which I speak. It worked very well in this recipe.