How To Make Lemon Bars

I like lemon bars. Always have. But they're usually made with Jello, or some other pre-packaged stuff that I really don't want to pay attention to or I won't want to eat it.

But these ... oh my goodness. All good ingredients, and the most perfect flavor ever. Not too tart, not cloyingly sweet. Just, well ... perfect.

Read the rest ...

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Ingredients

1 fruit bar crust
2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
2 teaspoons lemon rind (about 1 lemon)

Directions

This one's easy. Combine the sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs and flour.





Squeeze the lemon, strain out the seeds, and measure out what you need.



I usually don't recommend new hardware unless it really makes a difference, but if you're going to be doing a lot of recipes that use citrus rind, get yourself a good microplane. I don't have one, and this took forever to get the two teaspoons of rind I needed.



Make sure you don't get down into the white pulp. It's very bitter.

UPDATE: Down in the comments, Stephanie pointed out something blindingly obvious ... if I had bothered to think about what I was doing. Get the rind before squeezing the lemon. Otherwise you're rubbing a floppy, empty lemon peel against the grater/microplane.

Mix everything until it's well combined, but don't beat it. You don't want to fluff up the eggs. Pour into the prepared baking dish.



Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes until it just starts browning on top.



This will puff up while cooking, then deflate while it cools.



When you cut the lemon bars out, keep a towel handy to wipe the knife after every cut. This is very sticky. If you let it build up on the knife you'll end up just mashing it to bits.

You can dust them with powdered sugar, or just serve plain.



And that's it.

Oh, be sure to refrigerate any leftovers. And cut them before refrigerating; the crust gets pretty crunchy when it cools.

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How To Make Fruit Bar Crust

Now that summer is here, it's time to start thinking about desserts made with fresh fruit. Last summer it was all about cobbler at our house. This year it looks like we'll be doing fruit squares. And all of them are going to have pretty much this same exact crust.

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Ingredients

2 cups flour
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Directions

Melt the butter, then combine it with the flour and sugar and mix.




Using your hands, press the dough into an ungreased 9x13 baking dish.



This was a really hard step for me to watch, because I tend to be a perfectionist. I was trying to figure out what kind of tool I could use to make the top more smooth and even. But my wife was right: This dough is so thin that you need to feel it.

Bake at 350° for 20 minutes, until the edges start to turn golden brown. Don't go until the whole surface is browned, or it will start to pull away from the edges. And since you haven't added the topping yet, you don't want that.



And that's it.

Stick around to see what we put in this ... the best lemon bars I've ever had.

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My Daughter, the Omnivore

So I come downstairs for lunch, and there's this container of berries on the counter. I know we didn't have them yesterday, and no one has been to the store. So I ask where they came from.

"They were on the tree down by the beach."

Uhhh ... Excuse me?

"Yeah, the blackberry tree."

I'll skip the back-and-forth and get to the bottom line. They're not blackberries, they're actually mulberries. As in "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush ..."

Some very black.



Some, more red.



And after a good rinsing, they taste like tart red grapes.

Cool, my daughter is foraging now.

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