Lemon Bars

I love lemon bars, but they are often left out and forgotten for months at home. We tend to reach for chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream and anything chocolate related, followed by fruit pies and chips? So sometimes I have to remind myself to bring lemon desserts back to the forefront. And when I do, they always go down well.

Translation: they disappear within four minutes.

These lemon bars are just the way I like them. A nice, substantial, cookie-like crust, just enough filling …. perfect for a summer or spring dessert! If you don’t already have a favorite lemon bar recipe, give them a try and see how you like them!

(And if you don’t like them … send me the leftovers).

YIELDS: 16 – 20 serving(s)

PREP TIME: 15 mins

COOK TIME: 40 mins

TOTAL TIME: 55 mins

CAL/SERV: 290

Ingredients

FOR THE CRUST

• 2 c. flour
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter, cut into small cubes

FOR THE FILLING

• 1 1/2 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. flour
• 4 whole large eggs
• Zest and juice of 4 medium-sized lemons
• Powdered sugar, for sifting

Directions

1. 1For the crust: Preheat the oven to 350˚. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan with butter. (Use an 8 x 10 pan if you’d like the layers to be a little thicker.)
2. 2Stir together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the butter to the bowl and use a pastry cutter to cut it all together until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Press into the prepared pan and bake until golden around the edges, about 20 minutes.
3. 3For the filling: Stir together the sugar and flour. Crack in the eggs and whisk to combine. Add the lemon zest and juice and mix until combined. Pour over the crust and bake about 20 minutes.
4. 4Allow to cool in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours, then sift powdered sugar over the top before cutting into squares.

I’m a little weird about lemon bars, in that I tend not to love them if they’re made mostly of lemon filling with a super thin crust at the bottom. So these have a thicker cookie-like crust and a not-too-thick layer of filling.

Start by buttering a 9 x 13-inch pan. And when you think you’ve buttered it enough, go ahead and butter it some more!

That’s the kind of mood I’m in this week. Just giving you the heads up.

First, make the cookie-licious base for the lemon bars: Combine flour and sugar in a bowl…

Along with a little salt…

Then whisk it together.

Hello, my darling butter! How was your weekend?

Cut the butter into cubes and angrily throw it into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Make sure the butter is cold!

Use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the dry ingredients…

Until the mixture resembles lumpy sand.

I’m tired of saying “coarse crumbs” to describe the state of the butter/flour mixture after it’s been cut together. So today I’m branching out into new descriptive territory and saying “lumpy sand.”

Next week, who knows? I might be back to “coarse crumbs” again.

Or I might be somewhere like “crumbled madness.”

Time will only tell.

Pour the crumbled madness (oooops! It happened already!) into the buttered dish…

Then use your (very clean!) hands to pat it firmly into the bottom of the pan.

Press along the edges, too, so it’s all evenly packed. Then pop it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes to set it slightly—it will get slightly golden around the edges.

While it’s in the oven, mix up the filling! Whisk together sugar with a little flour…

Then zest four small-ish lemons…

Until you have a nice big pile of the good stuff.

Slice the zested (they always look nekkid to me) lemons in half and squeeze the ever-loving life (I mean juice) out of them.

This gives you some idea about the size of lemons. The reason I mention it is that I never remember to measure the lemon juice so I can tell you an actual cup measurement…but if you stick to small/medium lemons, 4 is a good number. Also, I press/roll the lemons on the countertop before I slice them in half, just to make sure I get most of the juice outta there.

Crack the eggs into the bowl with the sugar/flour mixture…

Then whisk it together until it’s all combined.

Pour in the juice…

Then violently throw in the zest!

Whisk it together…and that’s the filling.

By now, the base is out of the oven and I want to cut a square of it, top it with a little strawberry preserves, and eat it as a snack, which has absolutely nothing to do with this dessert. I’m just telling you where my mind goes sometimes.

I mean all the time.

Pour the filling…

All over the crust…

Until it’s totally…

Covering the whole thing. Then put it back into the oven for about 18 to 20 more minutes, until the filling is set.

Now, I have a confession to make. Two, actually.

The first confession is that I forgot to take a photo of the pan when it first came out of the oven.

The second confession is that the reason I forgot to take the photo is that I was too busy cutting a square out of the warm pan and enjoying a snack rooted in impatience to remember to take the photo.

I’m just being honest here.

In any event, I let the pan cool slightly, then put it in the fridge for a good 2 hours to let the lemon bars set and chill. Then I sifted powdered sugar liberally over the surface of the bars, then sliced them into neat squares, using none other than…

A bench scraper!

A knife works fine too, though.

These are nice and sweet and a little rich in a tangy, lemony sense…so I keep the squares sort of medium-sized.

Yummy! Lemon bars!

Mmmm.