Today on Sugar Spun Run I'll be showing you how to make my favorite lemon bars.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers! Sam here and today we are making the
best lemon bars. These bars have a buttery,
crisp, shortbread crust. That's right it does not get soggy,
and it has a tart smooth lemon curd topping.
Now to get started you'll want to preheat your oven to 325 degrees
Fahrenheit. We're going to start by making our crust
and I'm going to be using my food processor to do this to make the job
nice and easy. Let's combine one and a half cups of all-purpose flour,
one-third cup of granulated sugar, one and a half teaspoons of cornstarch,
and one-fourth teaspoon of salt. Just briefly pulse everything together
until your ingredients are nicely combined.
Next you'll need 10 tablespoons of very cold unsalted butter.
Cut this into small pieces and scatter it evenly over the top of your flour mixture.
Now pulse this together until you have a mixture that resembles coarse crumbs.
In a small bowl we're going to combine one egg yolk. This is just the yolk.
And one half teaspoon of vanilla extract.
And I like to use a fork to just briefly scramble these together.
Pour this evenly over your flour mixture, as evenly as you can, and we're going to
pulse again until the mixture starts to clump together.
So the mixture looks pretty crumbly at this point, but as you can see,
if you press it together between your thumb and your fingers,
it holds together. It clings together. So this is our
shortbread crust. I'm going to be transferring this to a 9x9 baking dish
that i've lined with parchment paper. When making lemon curd it's really
important that that lemon layer does not touch any aluminum. So do not
use aluminum foil when making this and don't bake your lemon bars directly in
an aluminum baking pan. If you do, what will happen is the taste
can get affected and become a little too metallic and it can even change the color of your lemon topping
Pour this into your prepared baking pan.
You can use your hands to evenly spread this into the bottom of the pan,
but one trick I like to do to make it easy is to just spread it out with my
hands first loosely, and then take a piece of wax
paper, flatten it with my hands, and then use
the back of the spoon for a nice even crust.
Take this over to your 325 degree Fahrenheit oven where, for a nice crisp crust, you're
going to want to make sure you bake it for about 20 to 25 minutes
or until the edges are turning a nice light golden brown.
While that crust is cooking you're going to want to start preparing your lemon topping.
Now unlike many recipes, I prepare mine
over on the stovetop. So you're going to want to grab a medium sized saucepan.
To make lemon bars with a nice crisp
crust i prefer to cook the lemon topping separately. This keeps it from soaking
into the crust and making it soggy, which is my biggest pet peeve when
it comes to lemon bars. Now in this saucepan we're going to combine
two large whole eggs and four additional egg yolks. Add one cup of granulated sugar.
Just an eighth teaspoon of salt.
And most importantly one half cup of fresh squeezed lemon
juice. Whisk these ingredients together until they're nicely combined.
And then we'll add one half cup, or eight
tablespoons, of unsalted butter. Turn your stove top heat to medium-low
And you're going to want to whisk constantly until the butter is melted and the mixture is thickened.
After a couple minutes your mixture should be thickened, and if you dip a
spoon in it, as you can see, it coats the back of the spoon.
And another test you can do is just run your finger to leave a trail through
that curd and if it doesn't fall back in on
itself and re-cover that spoon then you're good to go.
Always run your lemon curd through a strainer before using. That way if any
bits of the egg have cooked, or if there are any seeds from your lemons,
those will all be caught and they won't end up in your lemon topping.
At this point your lemon curd topping is finished and your crust
should be coming out of the oven just about now. I like to pierce mine all over
just sticking the fork about halfway into the crust before I go any further.
And then just evenly pour this curd over your crust.
Now this is going to need to go back into our 325 degree Fahrenheit preheated
oven where it will need to cook for about another five to ten minutes.
It's just going to help those egg yolks bind back together and keep the curd
from running everywhere when you cut into it.
You can see there's still a little bit of a jiggle in the center but it's
mostly set. You want to let those lemon bars cool
completely, at least for two hours before serving.
If you're like me you might even prefer them chilled rather than at room
temperature. These have cooled completely so they're
just about ready to serve, but as you probably know
no lemon bar is complete without a generous sprinkling of powdered sugar.
I don't know about you but my mouth is watering just thinking about these, so let's go ahead and dig in.
And this crust is nice and crisp so it's going to give you a little bit of
resistance, which is exactly what you want.
And there you have it. Crisp, buttery, shortbread crust
and that tart lemon curd topping. I'm so excited for you guys to try this recipe,
especially if you're like me and are tired of those
mushy bottoms that so many lemon bars have.
Thank you guys so much for watching today's recipe and I can't wait to hear
how you like this one. I'll see you next time.
So good