Lemon and Lime Bars

I hadn’t planned on talking about my lemon bars this week, but after I brought them to a dinner Saturday night I was asked for the recipe so many times I decided to share!

I needed to bring something for dessert to a casual dinner Saturday night and TBG suggested lemon bars, a favorite of the kids I haven’t made in forever. I went to pull out my recipe and oops: my longtime lemon bar recipe is in Chicago, and I’m in SoFlo.

So I googled. Browsing the online recipes made me decide to make 1 batch lemon bars, 1 batch key lime bars (after all, we’re in Florida!)

And after letting my fingers swipe one recipe after another, I decided to adapt a recipe by David Lebovitz. Primarily because his recipe was in an 8×8 pan and I was caught-up in his Paris kitchen remodeling tales. As good a reason as any.

Here’s the recipe I used: you can compare it to David’s* and see which you prefer.

Lemon Bars

Crust

Lemon Topping

1. 1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF
2. 2. Line an 8″ pan with foil
3. mix 1 cup flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 8 tablespoons melted butter, and vanilla, stirring until a soft dough forms
4. pat the batter evenly into the bottom of the pan
5. bake the crust for 25 minutes
6. juice and zest the lemon into a bowl
7. add the eggs, 1 cup sugar, four teaspoons of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 3 tablespoons melted butter, and blend
8. when the crust comes out of the oven, reduce the heat of the oven to 300ºF. Pour the lemon filling over the hot crust and bake for 25 minutes
9. remove from the oven and let cool completely. Once cool, carefully lift out the bars grasping the foil.
10. cut the bars into squares or rectangles. Sift powdered sugar over the top before serving.

*note: I wanted to try the whole lemons in the food processor, but my processor is in storage. Somewhere.

Lime Bars

I followed the exact same recipe as the lemon bars, except I substituted 2 key limes for the 1 lemon.

Optional: add 2 drops green food dye to differentiate the lime bars from the lemon bars. I used 3 drops in mine, and I think they’re a little too green, don’t you?

Note: I was violently conflicted about adding the food dye but the only other solution to differentiate the bars was to sprinkle the powdered sugar dusted lemon bars with lemon zest, and the lime bars with lime zest. And that would have involved a trip to the market, which I wasn’t doing. Then I realized: key lime pie in Florida is ALWAYS green, and it doesn’t get that way from the limes!

There were no complaints Saturday nite. And a large empty plate.