Lemon Bars: Light Shortbread Crust Topped with Tangy Lemon Curd
Blending Sweet and Tart with Delicious
Lemon Bars | photo by Dara O’Brien
By Dara O’Brien
Creative Director, Lake Isle Press
The lemon is sour. But it can be sweet. And savory. It’s the stealth ingredient that brightens others but you don’t always see or detect. Zested into a marinade, squirted into a sauce, squeezed into a soup, lemon is the too-often unsung hero ingredient.
But it’s not just the quintessential supporting player; lemon really shines in a starring role. So let’s talk Lemon Bars. I recently made some for the first time, using a recipe from what has become one of my baking bibles: “Jim Fobel’s Old-Fashioned Baking Book,” published by Lake Isle Press.
This wasn’t just my first time making lemon bars, it may also be my first time tasting one. (Lemon bars may be commonplace, but trust me, the list of dishes and ingredients I’ve never tried, though getting shorter, is alarmingly hefty.) However, since this recipe calls for lemon, sugar, and eggs on a shortbread crust, it stood to reason that I wouldn’t hate it.
Before I encountered this recipe I had two go-to lemon dessert recipes: lemon layer cake and lemon sandwich cream cookies. Both are delicious, but baking them takes a bit of time, especially the cookies. Here is lemony goodness that is very easily accomplished. You don’t even have to soften the butter ahead of time. Thus, I now have lemon dessert recipe number three.
I’m what you might call an emerging baker, so mini-challenges often come up when I try a new recipe. This is maybe the fourth time I’ve cut cold butter into a dough, and the second time I’ve used a dough blender instead of two forks to do it. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten the dough to the right consistency. (Should I cut the butter in more? Work the dough more with my hands?) I made the call that it was holding together and to not overdo, then pressed the dough into the pan and popped it in the oven. Next I put the eggs into the bowl of my stand mixer, added the sugar, then the lemon and set it to high speed. The mixture shot up like a tiny little geyser. I placed the pouring shield on top of the bowl then put a kitchen towel over it. But the recipe calls for the curd to mix for 10 minutes, so a lot of lemon curd found its way to that towel. Perhaps I should have also reduced the speed by a notch? Next time.
Though my test run wasn’t all smooth sailing, it didn’t matter in the least. My lemon bars were delicious: lightly sweet, not at all sugary, with a lovely lemony tang and a nice hint of chewiness. I had four tasters for this batch—all of whom got their treats at least a day or two after they were baked—and all gave them a thumbs up. I froze and then defrosted two pieces to see how they’d stand up to freezing. No problem.
I sliced my batch into rectangles rather than squares; they’re more fun to eat that way. But next time I may try them as bite-sized canapés—and I already have two next times in mind. I may be late in jumping onto the lemon bar bandwagon, but I am fully on board.
The more I cook the more I come to appreciate the lemon. Fresh, juicy, and fragrant, there is poetry in it. Pablo Neruda invokes the lemon “a ray of light that became a fruit” and casts its juice as “a yellow cup full of miracles.” Most of the time we overlook the simple beauty of such everyday things. Then we taste a lemon bar, and for a flash we are transported.
Lemon Bars Recipe
Makes 12
Click here to print recipe.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, sliced
2 large eggs
¾ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
PREPARATION
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F. In a medium-sized bowl, stir together 1 cup of the flour and ¼ cup of the confectioner’s sugar. Cut in the butter until it resembles coarse meal and then work it with your fingertips until dough holds together. Press evenly into the bottom of an ungreased 8-inch square pan. Bake about 15 minutes, until light golden brown. Remove, but leave the oven on.
Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the eggs until frothy. Gradually beat in the granulated sugar. Add the lemon zest and lemon juice; beat at high speed for 10 minutes, until smooth and slightly thickened.
On a sheet of waxed paper combine the remaining 2 tablespoons flour with the baking powder and salt; gradually beat into the egg mixture, beating just until smooth. Pour over the baked layer and bake about 20 minutes longer, until set and lightly browned. Cool in the pan on a rack. Sift the remaining 1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar over the top and cut into 12 bars.
“After many trials with various recipes for lemon bars from the family files, I finally found one that called for beating the mixture for ten minutes to thicken it. This allowed me to cut down a bit on the amount of sugar and to add extra lemon juice to produce these still sweet, intensely lemon-flavored bars.”
—Jim Fobel
Lemon Bar Recipe
from “JIM FOBEL’S OLD-FASHIONED BAKING BOOK”
by Jim Fobel, Lake Isle Press, 1996
Inspired by his grandmother, mother, and aunts, the late Jim Fobel collected the best of their old-fashioned recipes and re-worked them for today’s cooks. He was a protégé of James Beard and frequent contributor to Family Circle, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and a noted food writer.
“Charming nostalgia...mouth-watering, the way fruit pies cooling on the porch should be.”
— THE NEW YORK TIMES
OTHER RECIPES FROM THIS BOOK
Blueberry Muffins Recipe
Cardamom Cookies Recipe
Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
Cinnamon Cake Recipe
Grandma’s Peanut Butter Cookies Recipe
Lemon Layer Cake Recipe
Mystery Cake of 1932 Recipe
New York CheeseCake Recipe
Orange Coffee Cake Recipe