Christmas Baking Part 2: Cranberry Bliss Bars

I love dried cranberries and I love white chocolate.  Combined they are even better!!  I also love the Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bars.. however, I haven't had them in years.  I can't justify the cost of the little bar you get! 

Anyway... I had been contemplating what cookies to take home with us to Michigan while doing my nightly cooking/baking blog surfing, when I came across the Cranberry Bliss Bar copy cat recipe.  This started my search to find the exact recipe I wanted to use.. After searching and searching and finding only small differences between the various recipes I decided on this one from Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats.

Here are my notes:

• I only used the vanilla extract in the cake.. Other websites said to use both vanilla and orange extract.  This recipe says "or"..  I didn't have any orange extract...
• After trying to find candied ginger at 2 stores I gave up and decided not to add it.
• For the cake I used white chocolate chips instead of cutting up a bar
• Frosting-  I used the lemon juice.. at first I thought it tasted too Lemony... but as these bars sat in fridge the tasted mellowed out.
• Drizzle Icing-  I used the white chocolate chips melted because this is how I remember the actual bar from Starbucks..  This makes these bars pretty difficult to cut... so you  may want to cut them before the chocolate is completely hard.
• Also I used the trick of melting the white chocolate and shortening in the Ziplock that you are going to use to drizzle.. AMAZING!  Never thought of it before!!

• The recipe says 16 servings.. I got way way more!!  I cut these rather small.. they are really rich!