- Did somebody ask for a little drop of sunshine
in bar form?
My lemon bar recipe is so easy to make, fool-proof,
and full of delicious zingy lemon flavor.
The top just melts in your mouth
and the bottom is this crisp delicious shortbread crust,
you're gonna love this recipe.
Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen,
were I, John Kanell, teach you
how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These lemon bars are gonna be ready
in two shakes of a lambs tail, so let's get started!
First off, we're gonna make an easy-breezy and delicious
shortbread crust for our lemon bars.
But before all that, oven to 350 fahrenheit,
get a 9 by 13 baking dish and line it in parchment paper,
parchment paper, parchment paper.
You can do this by hand in a bowl with a spatula,
but I'm gonna use my stand mixer
just because stand mixer does a better job than I do
and I have one.
Into the bowl of your stand mixer
and you can sift this out,
as a best practice I always sift everything.
So don't really need to, but why not?
300 grams, or two and a half cups of all-purpose flour.
Perfect!
Half a teaspoon of salt, in you go,
a little bit of balance for the sweetness
and two thirds of a cup or about 66 grams
of confectioners' sugar.
We're going to whisk it up.
And no, I do not need my scale anymore.
You know, I got an email last week,
that I've yet to respond to, telling me
that it's actually scales.
Is it scales, is that right?
Scales?
It might be an English thing.
And now we can whisk, whisk, whisk,
that's all you have to do.
Pop it onto your stand mixer now
and we're gonna go to town.
The bowl is on the mixer, it's got a paddle attachment
and now it's time to add in 12 tablespoons or 170 grams
of unsalted, melted butter.
Did I say it was melted, it's melted.
Turn this on, lock it, put it on low or stir,
and we're just gonna drizzle it in.
Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle.
You could dump it in, it doesn't really matter.
Let's not go crazy here,
it's like shortbread flying everywhere.
Okay, that looks pretty good,
it kinda is like a crumbly mixture,
you can see from what I just threw on the counter top,
but it'll all pat together in the pan.
And can you add a little bit of vanilla?
Sure, you know I'm the king of vanilla,
but in this instance I'm refraining
because the lemon flavor is so like out-there.
So I'm using my spatula just to see
if there's any bits that need to be mushed in
a little bit more.
That looks good.
Okay, it's time to dump all this
delicious shortbread mixture into our 9 by 13 prepared pan.
Whoa, it's a crumbly mess, everything's ruined!
No it's fine, it's kinda like pastry dough
or it looks like it's a rough and tumble texture,
but you're going to tame it just by patting it together.
So let's first kinda spread it out,
move it around, couple Virgo tendencies
are coming to life right now,
things need to be evenly placed.
Just use your clean hands to press, press, press.
It doesn't have to be perfectly even,
just mostly even.
The main thing is that you have some crust
at the bottom to protect our delicious lemon filling
and provide a nice contrast of textures.
You can use your hands, you can use your knuckles,
you can even use a measuring cup if you wanted to,
but that's a little but overboard, I think.
Make sure to get those corners.
And this is why having a parchment lined baking dish
is amazing.
The parchment will just lift right out,
you don't have to worry at all about
things getting stuck in the pan.
I've had that happen before with brownies
and it's just so sad, so sad.
Brownies?
Click up here for my fudgy brownie recipe!
It's one of my all time favorites
and so just fudgy and delicious,
it's like the chocolate version of this recipe,
you're gonna love it.
Okay, this is totally pressed down.
The test would be to show you and say,
look, it's totally pressed down.
Pop this into the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes.
Here's the deal, you could have it be
ever so slightly almost golden,
or it could be like golden brown,
it's totally up to you in how much
you want to cook the shortbread crust.
I like mine a little bit golden but,
we'll see what I'm feeling like at the moment.
While that short crust is in the oven--
While that short--
(laughs)
One more time.
While that shortbread's in the oven,
we're gonna be processing the sugar and lemon zest together.
This'll make all those oils explode out of the skin
into the sugar and it's just amazing.
It's optional though, you do not have to do it,
so don't feel bad if you don't want
to lug your processor out or if you don't have one.
I went years and years without having a food processor,
because I was like, I don't need one,
but then eventually I was like,
you know what, I'm gonna try it out and I love it now.
Two cups of sugar and three cups of sugar,
at 200 grams that's 600 grams of sugar.
Now I'm using a microplane to zest this lemon.
This is a great tool to have,
I can include a link in the description if you'd like,
they are so handy.
You can like, microplane spices
like nutmeg or cardamom if you want,
zest different kinds or fruits and lots of fun things.
Okay, zest of three lemons, get them all naked.
Now we're gonna whiz it up, whiz whiz whiz,
until all the zest is broken up
and you sugar's gone from white
to a wonderful pastel lemon color.
(laughs)
Okay, lemon--oh my gosh,
do you see this?
Look at that.
So good, it's just like this beautiful,
clouds of lemon sugar, you've gotta make this.
Put that aside and we're gonna make our filling,
it comes together so quickly,
except for juicing the lemons,
that takes the longest unless you have
some little helpers on hand, mine are asleep right now.
Now it's time to juice our lemons,
you can use a juicer, whatever you want.
This is my favorite tool, it's a little wooden juicer.
You wanna have one cup, or 240 mL,
of fresh lemon juice, so delicious.
I love lemon bars, they're one of the recipes
my mom would make because she is a lemon-holic,
when I was growing up.
But, they kinda fell out of favor for whatever reason
so I rediscovered the recipe very recently
and have been all about them ever since.
These are gonna be a special treat for Brian and the boys,
and for me too, I'll be snaking on them at night,
like gimme a lemon bar!
Okay, we got one cup of lemon juice in there,
let's put this aside for a moment
and get a big bowl out, we're almost ready.
It all comes together while that's in the oven
and it's going to be going back into the oven,
so let's go!
All right, the shortbread crust came out of the oven now,
we want to pour on the lemon filling
while it is still warm so keep on moving.
All right, carefully remove these very sharp blades.
Now we're gonna dump the sugar in,
so fragrant, so much lemon!
Look at this, it's just beautiful clouds of amazingness,
could swim in that.
Okay, half a cup or 60 grams of flour, in you go.
Now give it a good whisk, whisk whisk whisk,
just to distribute the flour.
You know I love sifting, but in this case
you don't wanna do that
just because the zest is gonna clog up your sifter,
it's gonna be kinda annoying.
Look at this, that is a lot of deliciousness in there.
Did I mention that we're gonna put some eggs in here?
Yes, this is a giant, basically a lemon custard
we're making, so get to cracking.
You could do this in a separate bowl
if you're feeling like you wanna be super safe,
but I'm risking it.
Whole eggs in you go.
We need eight, large, room-temperature eggs,
so keep on going until you're done.
Eight large eggs, in you go.
We're gonna whisk this up,
but you can add lemon juice right now too.
One cup of fresh lemon juice.
Now it's time to mix, mix, mix,
but, you know, be careful because this bowl is really full.
Whisking things is one of George and Lachlan's
favorite things to do in the kitchen,
but you've gotta be strategic, big bowl, less contents.
Bowl's very full!
Smells so good, and by the by,
you can make all sorts of curds,
this filling reminds me of my delicious lemon curd,
you can click up here for that video,
it is so, just zingy and full of flavor
and you can add it into or onto almost anything.
And you can make curds with orange juice,
with berry juice, all sorts of things.
Once you're sure this is totally mixed up and homogenous,
nice and neat, you can pour this into the filling.
So, looks that way to me, let's pour it into the filling!
And just so you can see, this is what the shortbread
looks like, it's just ever so slightly golden at the edges.
It's gonna continue cooking with the curd on top.
There you go.
Last step before it goes into the oven the final time,
we're gonna pour this delicious filling
all over our shortbread crust.
Mm, amazing!
Get it all out,
(laughs)
I caught it, I caught it.
This'll go into the oven at 350 for about 25 minutes,
the edges will be like, set-ish
and the inside will be a little bit jiggly,
turn it around halfway,
as it cools down, it'll set completely,
so just don't over bake it
because then it gets kinda rubbery and hard,
and nobody likes that.
My lemon mega bar chilled in the fridge for like two hours,
we had dinner, et cetera,
and now it's firm enough to cut.
I wanna show you what it looks like though, take a look!
So in the middle, really really yellow,
the edge, just started to lighten up
and rise up a little bit.
So when it was in the oven,
it still jiggled just a little bit,
but I knew it would set, you don't want it to be brown,
do not let it brown.
If you do let it brown, it's okay, more powdered sugar.
Anyways, let's carefully remove this out.
Just get the corners first.
And now, for the tricky part, so tilt it, and there we go.
I can peel the paper away now.
Just smells like lemon,
it's literally a drop of sunshine in bar form.
Paper's peeled away,
I'm gonna dust this with confectioners' sugar now.
So just add a little bit in there, tap tap tap.
Somewhat optional, but I like the way it looks.
Now we're gonna cut these,
but I wanted to show you this because you want
to dampen your knife with a wet paper towel,
that'll give you a nice clean cut.
I like a large lemon bar piece,
although you can cut these really small,
they're quite delicious and full of zing.
Clean your knife off in between each cut and repeat.
These are so perfectly baked, melt in your mouth,
glossy, lemon zingy realness on top,
with a crisp, crisp shortbread crust on the bottom.
You're gonna love them.
If you like this recipe, check out my lemon playlist,
all my favorite lemon recipes and you are guaranteed
to love all of them if you like lemons, it's real thing.
All right, but now it's time for a bite!
So crunchy, so gooey, so much lemon, mm!
If you like this recipe, hit that like button and subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video!