This lemon bars recipe is easy to make with everyday ingredients and the bars are sweet and tart with just the right amount of lemon.
Every once in a while, I crave lemon. Typically I’m a chocolate girl, or a chocolate dulce de leche girl, or a triple chocolate girl… you get the idea, right? But once a year or so, I want a fresh pop of lemon so I dig around for ideas for a lemon dessert. This time I happened to be heading to a tiki party: 40 people, outdoors, on a hot summer day. So I needed portable finger food that wouldn’t melt. (Sorry chocolate.) I settled on lemon bars.
These lemon bars are easy peasy. And yes, there’s definitely a lemon squeezy. The crust is almost too simple: grate frozen butter, stir in the flour, salt and sugar and then just press the mixture into the pan and let the oven do the rest. The filling is just as easy requiring a few everyday ingredients and a whisk. Not need to bust out the mixer. Just use some elbow grease to whisk it all together.
The hardest part for me was getting them to cool fast enough to put sugar on them (perhaps a little forethought here would have helped, but it was too late for that on Saturday afternoon…) Luckily my basement was nice and cool, so these lemon bars got a front row seat to my husband’s afternoon jam session with his buddy.
- 1½ sticks unsalted butter, frozen
- 1¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus 3 Tbsp.
- ¾ cup powdered sugar, plus more for dusting
- 1 tsp. Kosher salt, divided
- 4 large eggs
- 1⅓ cups sugar
- ¾ cup fresh lemon juice
- ¼ cup whole milk
- Grated zest of half a lemon
- Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a 9x13 glass baking dish and line it with parchment.
- In a medium bowl, grate the butter. Add 1¾ cups flour, ¾ cup powdered sugar and ¾ tsp. salt. Mix with your hands until crumbly. It does not need to form a dough.
- Pour it into the prepared baking dish and press into the bottom of the dish with your fingers. Bake until golden, about 18 minutes.
- Reduce oven temperature to 325F.
- While crust is baking, make the filling. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, 3 Tbsp. flour, lemon juice, sugar, milk and zest until smooth. Pour over hot crust.
- Bake until set, about 20 minutes. Cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then lift out and cool completely on a rack.
- When cool, dust with powdered sugar and cut into 2-inch squares.
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