Barring Lemons.

[madbaker]

This week's Resolution Recipe: "The Best Lemon Bars".

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
4 eggses
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup flour
2 lemons, juiced and zested; I used three

Heat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, blend together butter, 2 cups flour, and 1/2 cup sugar. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9x13 pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until firm and golden.

In another bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/4 cup flour. Whisk in the eggses and lemon juice and zest. Pour over the baked crust. Bake for an additional 20 minutes. The bars will firm up as they cool. After cooled, cut into 2" squares. (I also sifted a bit of powdered sugar over the top to make it prettier.)

What worked: The main problem with lemon meringue pies, in my opinion, is that they waste calories on meringue and pie. (It's not that I dislike meringue and pie crust; it's just that, given the choice, I'd rather have a jar of lemon curd and a spoon.) This recipe is basically the good part of the lemon meringue pie on a small shortbread crust and it was excellent. The powdered sugar sifting was pretty.

What didn't: Despite the shortbread not being golden, it was a tad crunchy and made cutting slightly difficult. Not that it was burned or anything, just crunchy. I might reduce the first baking time to 15 minutes.

Will I make it again? Yeah. I suspect I could 1.5x the lemon part to increase the good bits. More lemony goodness.

Comments

[finickynarcane.livejournal.com]

One person I know does something that sounds much like that recipe only he uses lime. They are utterly fabulous.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

That sounds really good. One suggestion in this recipe was to make a half batch with lemon and a separate half with lime. Then combine cut pieces in a checkerboard pattern. Which would be attractive, but too much work in my opinion.

[tshuma]

That sounds exactly like my level of insanity.

[psybelle.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I might be tempted to score the crust slightly with a fork before baking it, see if that made cutting any easier (does mean that you need to know approximately where under the filling you scored the crust, but there are ways to accomplish this…)

[serendipity17.livejournal.com]

For shortbread-crusted cheesecakes, I make the shortbread, cool, crumble, then bind with more butter and freeze it. I'm guessing that wouldn't work very well with lemon bars' need to soak in heat from the crust layer.