The best lemon bars

Crisp shortbread crust, lemony topping, sweet vanilla glaze – what's not to love?

|
The Pastry Chef's Baking
A tart lemon topping over a shortbread crust makes a classic lemon bar.

Almost everyone I know loves lemon bars and almost every lemon bar recipe I see claims it’s "the best." I have very jaded taste buds so I rarely go into the superlative when I’m describing something unless it really, really deserves it. It doesn’t mean it isn’t good if I don’t call it "the best." Only that there are so many amazing recipes out there that are super fantastic that it’s hard to claim any single one recipe as "the best" of anything.

So I don’t know if this is the best lemon bar recipe I’ve ever tried. My normal go-to lemon bar recipe is also quite good and I don’t know if I would choose this one above that. The good thing is it's not really a competition. Both are good. Both can be made easily and eaten even more easily. Crisp shortbread crust, lemony topping, sweet vanilla glaze – not much not to love here.  If you’re a lemon bar fan, give this recipe a whirl. It’s good for using up at least one lemon.

Oh, and true confession time, I probably left this in the oven for 5 minutes longer than I should have. I was busy doing something on my computer and the time got away from me. By the time I checked on these, the top was golden brown all over and edging more towards "brown" than "golden" – eek. The good thing with lemon bars though is they’re hardy enough to withstand a few minutes' neglect because the topping is more of a custard and not a cake that will dry out. And the bottom came out a little crisp but not burnt and not crunchy-hard.  Dodged a baking bullet. Whew.

The Best Lemon Bars
From Your Home-Based Mom

For the crust:
1/2 cup butter, cold
1 cup flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar

For the filling:
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons lemon juice
grated rind of 1 lemon

For the glaze:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
lemon juice to make soft glaze

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8- x 8-inch pan with foil, lightly spray with cooking spray.

2. Cut together butter, flour and powdered sugar until mixture resembles coarse meal and press into an even layer into prepared pan. Bake for 15 minutes.

3. Mix together sugar, flour and baking powder. Add in eggs, lemon juice and lemon rind.

4. Pour over hot, baked crust and bake for 20-25 minutes or until edges are golden brown and mixture is set.

5. Mix together powdered sugar and enough lemon juice to make a glaze soft enough to drizzle over lemon bars while they are still warm. Glaze, let cool then cut into squares.

Related post on The Pastry Chef's Baking: Land O Lakes Lemon Bars

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to The best lemon bars
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2016/0328/The-best-lemon-bars
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe