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Lemon Bars
Robin, 27 June 08
2 c basic all purpose white flour
½ c confectioner’s/icing sugar
½ lb butter [sic]
Grated rind one lemon (do you have to be warned about ONLY grating the yellow part and NOT the white part? You also want unwaxed lemons if you’re going to eat the peel, and if I were you I’d want organic unwaxed lemons)
Mix flour and sugar; cut in butter and rind. Press in 13 x 9 inch pan (or reasonable equivalent. This is not a rocket-science, every 1/8th tsp counts, don’t slam the door while it’s baking, recipe). Bake 350° F 20 minutes, till light brown.
3 eggs, beaten till thoroughly mixed, but they should still be fluffy and foamy
2 c granulated sugar [sic]
½ c lemon juice (FRESH lemon juice. Anyone who uses Realemon or whatever ersatz rubbish they’re producing at the moment, is FOREVER BANNED from this blog)
1/3 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
Beat sugar, flour and baking powder into eggs, then lemon juice. (The original recipe told you to beat in the lemon juice first, which is perverse, because the result is so thin the flour and baking powder will lump. Maybe I’m missing some rockety-sciency chemical reaction doing it my way, but almost everybody I’ve fed these to has wanted the recipe so I guess I can live with my shortcomings as a chemist.) Pour over baked crust. Bake 350° 25 minutes. It should be obviously set but only very faintly brown in the corners. Sprinkle with icing sugar, let cool. Let cool THOROUGHLY before you try to cut it into bars or you will be very sorry–in fact I recommend you let your refrigerator help you. It cuts better if it’s been refrigerated but it tastes better if you let it warm back up to room temperature.
And by all means put a raspberry or a mint leaf on top. Or both. I know there are a lot of lemon-meringue-pie-without-the-meringue cookies/bars/tarts out there (and indeed there are lemon-meringue-with-the-meringue cookies, bars and tarts out there too) but this is the one I use. A lot of them don’t have enough lemon juice in them. This one didn’t either in its original incarnation. Have I mentioned lately I’m an extremist?
I put cornmeal in when I want a rougher crust and cornstarch/cornflour when I want a meltier crust. For this recipe I use neither.
I always use ’slightly’ (as it says on the packet) salted butter because I find that’s as much salt as baking generally needs.
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4 Responses to “Lemon Bars”
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I’m generally known as librarykat on the main blog. I just wanted to say that I baked this today. My 13-year-old son did the work for the shortbread crust. This is the summer that I’m teaching him some basic kitchen skills, so today he learned how to zest a lemon and how to cut butter into flour for pastry. He’s good at it! Took his time to zest only the skin and not the pulp. I used a lime to get the juice up to 1/2 cup, since my two lemons didn’t produce quite enough. My husband loves it, loves the real lemony flavor. Yay!
I’ve tried making these as well, and have decided to use double amount of egg mix next time, but probably cut down on the sugar. The lemon flavor is great. :-)
I made these yesterday and forgot – until half-way into making the base – that I’d thrown out my big baking tin a month or so back. So I used two muffin tins instead and had 24 little round individual lemon thingies. They are lovely – although these little ones don’t need 25 minutes further baking once you’ve poured the lemon egg mixture on top, only a bare 15 – 20 minutes.
made these yesterday myself, and so far I’m getting good responses so far.
I think the temp was a bit high when I poured the egg mixture on, all of the top turned brown fairly soon, lol, but it’s still good. I think I’ll go for a bit less sugar and a bit more lemon in the next batch.
I *love* the dough. dearly.