Recipe Notes: Best Lemon Bars

21 May 2018

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated, March 2018.

As I recall, I had never eaten lemon bars until I had moved to California and gotten married. I have made them a few times myself but I haven't had any in quite a while. A new recipe in a recent issue of Cook's Illustrated was all the reason I needed to make them again. It promises maximum lemon flavor created from a combination of lemon juice, lemon zest, and cream of tarter.

This was an easy dessert to make. For the crust AP flour, sugar, and salt were mixed with melted  butter to make a dough. This was patted into an 8-inch square baking pan (mine is Corning ware) that had been lined with aluminum foil to make a sling and baked at 350°. The filling was made by whisking together sugar, AP flour, cream of tarter and salt. Eggs and egg yolks were whisked into the dry ingredients then lemon juice and lemon zest were mixed in. (A total of four lemons were used.) This mixture was cooked on the stove until the temperature was 160°. The cooked filling was strained and poured onto the hot crust. This was baked until the filling was set, the bars were cooled, and cut into bars. The total time from start to taking the completed bars out of the oven was 80 minutes.

The finished lemon bars were good. They fulfilled their promise of being very tart, very lemony. The crust is rich and crisp. The filling was perhaps a bit soft and the crust could have been a little crisper, they were a little messy to eat when fresh. I stored the bars in the refrigerator and the following days the bars were a little less tart and a little easier to eat. Somewhat surprisingly, the crust was still crispy. If you like lemons and you like tart, these easy-to-make bars might be for you.