Buttery shortbread and luscious lemon filling make these lemon bars incredibly delicious!
With their bright pop of colour and zesty lemon flavour, they’re one of my favourite recipes.
Welcome to recipes by carina where I share with you how to make classic
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We’re going to start with the base first. In a medium sized mixing bowl add your butter.
Make sure it’s room temperature or else you’ve have a pretty hard time creaming it with the
sugar. We’ll need 225g, 2 sticks or 16 Tbsp. You’ll notice I give the measurements in cups
and grams so no matter where you live in the world you should find this recipe easy enough to follow.
Add the butter to the bowl followed by 1 cup or 125g of powdered sugar or icing sugar.
These are both the same ingredient just different names in different parts of the world. We’re
using powdered sugar here instead of granulated white sugar as it will dissolve into the butter
so much quicker and provides a more tender base, think kind of soft and snappy instead of crispy.
If you would like the full recipe for these zesty lemon bars it will be on my
website as well as the full measurements listed in the description box below.
Use a stand mixer or a hand mixer to cream the butter and sugar together for a minute or two
until light and fluffy and the sugar is fully dissolved. Watch out for the sugar cloud here when
you first start mixing, sometimes I like to do the first bit by hand as it can be much less messy.
Once light and fluffy measure out 2 cups or 250g of all purpose flour. Use your
mixer or a rubber spatula to combine it with the butter and sugar mixture.
There are a couple alternatives here if you want to jazz up your lemon bars a little.
The first would be adding half a cup of coconut to makes them lemon coconut bars,
incredibly delicious if you love coconut.
The second would be replacing half a cup of flour with half a cup of rolled oats to makes oaty lemon
bars. Let me know if you prefer either of these or you just like to keep it simple and easy!
The mixture will look pretty dry to start with but if you continue to mix it should start to
come together. I like to do the final part by hand with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon just
to scrape down the edges of the bowl and make sure everything is evenly combined.
Pour the base into a lined 9x13inch or 23 by 33cm baking pan.
Use the back of a spoon to press it firmly into an even layer and bake it in a 160C or 325F oven
for about 25 minutes or until the edges are just starting to brown.
While the base is baking in the oven we can get started on the filling.
In a large mixing bowl measure out 2 cups or 400g of granulated white sugar. We’re going to be
adding a lot of lemon juice here so the sweetness of the sugar contracts the sourness of the lemon.
I don’t find these too sweet but if you prefer desserts or baking less sweet
you can reduce the sugar down to 1 1/2 cups or 300g instead. As well as sweetness the sugar is
also an integral part of the texture of the lemon filling so don’t cut it down anymore than that
To the sugar measure out 1/2 cup or 60g of flour. If you are gluten free you can
substitute the flour in the base as well as here with corn flour or cornstarch instead.
These are both the same ingredient just different names in different parts of the world.
As well as the eggs were going to add soon the flour helps to set the
lemon bars perfectly so they’re still a little custardy and not dry and rubbery.
After you’ve added the dry ingredients we can start cracking in the eggs. We’ll need 6 medium
good quality eggs here, and no the lemon bars will not taste eggy at all so don’t be worried!
This recipe will make about 12 decently sized lemon squares or 15 smaller. If you would like
to halve the recipe I recommend baking it in a square pan for about the same amount of time,
maybe 5 minutes less for each the base and the filling,
just keep and eye on them and you’ll be able to tell when they’re done.
Once you’ve cracked in all the eggs use a whisk to start to combine everything together.
It’ll be really lumpy at first with the flour but keep going and after about a
minute it should start to smooth out into this beautiful mixture, we don’t want any lumps here.
Now for the flavour! Lemons! This is such a great dessert or baking to do
when you have a bunch of lemons floating around your kitchen or on your lemon tree!
First we’re going to zest one medium sized lemon, this ends up being about 1 Tbsp of zest.
I like to use this microplane here, if you don’t have one they’re so handy! I use it for
citrus zest, garlic and ginger and even parmesan. Alternatively if you would like to make lemon lime
bars you can zest a lime instead! Or really any kind of citrus works perfectly for this recipe.
After you’ve zested the lemon into the bowl we’ll need to juice about 4-6 to
get 1 cup of juice. This depends on how juicy or the size of your lemons.
Make sure to strain the juice through a sieve to remove any seeds before pouring it into the bowl.
It can be tempting to use lemon juice that you can buy but the
flavour just isn’t there so make sure you’re using fresh citrus.
Use the whisk again to combine the lemon filling together.
Set it to the side until the base has finished baking.
When the base is just starting to get some colour on the edges remove it from the oven.
While it’s still hot pour over your lemon filling,
there may be a tiny amount left over depending on the height of your pan.
Being really careful so you don’t spill it, transfer the pan back to the oven for
another 25-30 minutes or until the lemon filling is set and no longer jiggles.
Let the bars cool fully in the pan and transfer them to the fridge to firm up
even more. Use a sharp knife to cut it into squares and finally dust with sugar.
These will keep for about 3 days in the fridge. If you make these I would love
to see a photo, my email and social links are in the description box below.
Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next video.