Lemon Bars

This is my mom’s recipe. Lemon bars were a favorite treat of mine as a kid. (OK, truth is, just about anything sweet, and anything Mom baked, I liked!) The crust is like shortbread. I think you could tweak the filling to make it more lemony or less sweet, but it’s definitely good as is. I’ve seen recipes where you just sprinkle powdered sugar on top, but that would decrease the overall amount of lemon juice used – and making these LESS lemony couldn’t be a good thing, I’m thinking… So I stuck with the original glaze. I noted the changes I made – using slightly less butter in the crust, and sprinkling plain shredded coconut on half of the top. Just because I happened to open my cupboard to take out the powdered sugar and saw that bag of coconut just sitting there begging to be tried paired with lemon.

Lemon Bars

Crust:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened

(I substituted 1/3 cup butter and 1 tsp water for the 1/2 cup butter, in order to cut down on the fat content slightly.)

Filling:
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 eggs, beaten

1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder

(optional: coconut – As an experiment, I sprinkled coconut on half of the filling after pouring it over the crust. I thought it tasted pretty good.)

Glaze:
1 – 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
enough lemon juice to make a glaze

Mix together first three ingredients – flour, powdered sugar, butter – until it sticks together. Pat in the bottom of an 8 x 8 pan. Bake at 350*F for 15 minutes.

Combine sugar, flour and baking powder. Pour in lemon juice and beaten egg and mix well until smooth. Pour on top of baked crust. Put back in the oven and bake another 25 minutes at 350*F.

Let cool. Mix together about 1 to 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar with enough lemon juice to make a glaze and frost the top of the bars. Let set. Cut in squares and serve. Cover leftovers. Even better the next day.