Strawberry Shortbread Bars (AKA Funeral Bars)

These are Strawberry Shortbread Bars, but in my head I’ve always called them Funeral Bars. For the very simple reason that I had them for the first time at a funeral! And it stuck in my head, so I’ve call them that in my head every time I’ve made these. Which has been a lot of times – my family used to make these all the time!

My grandpa passed away when I was about eight years old, and it wasn’t necessarily unexpected – he’d been fighting cancer for a long time. So there’d been time to expect it was going to happen, but at eight years old I didn’t quite comprehend it all. As any precocious and logical eight year old might process things, I thought:

1. I am sad about this.
2. There’s nothing to be done to fix it.
3. Therefore I will be sad forever.

Which is a pretty daunting feeling to have at 8 years old! I felt I was grappling with the prospect of being sad forever, while also just being sad in the moment. I’m not sure if it was the funeral or a wake, but I remember going to a memorial for him a few days after, and being surrounded by a bunch of people I had never met before. Who were these people and how did they know my grandpa? At that age, I didn’t like meeting strangers who were adults, much less when I was sad and had no idea what I was supposed to say. So my siblings and I eventually retreated to a backroom area of the venue that was a small kitchen.

There, I was able to be a bit more comfortable. My siblings and I were able to talk about whatever, and we didn’t need to be introduced to strangers. We found ourselves eating the food that was laid out in the kitchen. And that’s where I tried these bars for the first time! And they were very very good. I probably ate more than one. But they came with a sense of… not guilt, but some questions of: am I allowed to like the dessert at my grandpa’s funeral? Is it bad to be enjoying a treat right now? Is it bad that this distracted me from being actively sad right now?

When my mom came back to check on us, she tried one and also loved them. She tracked down the woman who had brought them. I remember she said, “Maybe this isn’t the time, but we’d love this recipe!”

And (of course, not in so many words when I was eight), that felt like getting an okay to enjoy the bars. It was an okay to get a little distracted by dessert, and to not be actively sad for a bit. And it was an okay to think of fun plans for the future (like baking a new recipe), even though you may still be a bit sad then. It was a big realization to have at eight years old, with my mouth full of dessert. Again, not in so many words at the time, but I remember the sense of relief that grieving didn’t mean just being sad forever – it was being sad while you had multiple emotions happening at one time. (In retrospect, perhaps this was an “Inside Out” moment for me. Perhaps one of my “core memories.”)

For a while, when I was a young baker and had a small rotation, my family made these bars all the time. They got a place of honor in my print-out cookbook (see below). You can tell I was eight years old when I typed it up, because I had some fun with the fonts. And every time I made them, I got to remember my grandpa again, and the origin of how we got the recipe. I still think of these bars fairly often, but my repertoire has expanded a bit since I was a kid, so I haven’t made them in years.

It was great to make them again though! It has to have been over a decade since I last had them, but they still taste the same! It’s amazing how the taste memory can come back to you in an instant. Can’t beat a classic.

Anyways… I know that’s a lot of emotion to project on to some strawberry shortbread bars, but I’ve clearly been connecting food to some deeper meaning for a while now!

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