Lemon Bars

A dessert with a shortbread base and lemon custard topping. It’s based on Clara Le’s modification of Barry’s lime bars, but I have translated it into imperial units and slightly modified it.

This recipe is scaled to make around 20 bars and takes about 1 hour.

Ingredients

Shortbread

• 2 cups flour
• 0.5 cups sugar
• 2 sticks (1 cup total) butter

Custard

• 0.75 cups lemon juice; approx. 5 small or 3 large lemons
• Lemon zest
• 0.25 cups flour
• 1 heaping cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• Powdered sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 F.
2. Mix shortbread ingredients until it reaches the texture of coarse meal.
3. In a greased, parchment-lined 9x13“ pan, pack the shortbread into an even layer.
4. Bake the shortbread 20-25m or until starting to brown.
5. While the shortbread bakes, combine custard ingredients except powdered sugar and whisk until fully combined.
6. Let custard rest at least 10 min.
7. When the shortbread is done, whisk the custard again very briefly, then try to pop all the bubbles formed in the custard. Pour custard over the shortbread and remove all the bubbles.
8. Bake bars 20-25 min.
9. Coat top of bars with powdered sugar.

Notes

• If your oven is not level, the lemon bars will have too much custard on one side of the pan and too little on the other. I still do not know an easy way to fix this.