A Lemon Bar Story
2 min read

A Lemon Bar Story

You know, I’ve realized something about writing baking and cooking posts. The in-between stages of prep and mixing are really not that glamorous and lead to some pretty ugly photos. Unfortunately for clueless people in the kitchen like me, this leads to not a lot of helpful photos when following recipes online. Like, how are you supposed to know when butter and sugar cream until fluffy? What does fluffy even mean in the context of butter and sugar? How sticky is my dough supposed to be?

Only important questions here.

Following in food blog form, I did not take any ugly in between photos of the creation my lemon bars, but instead artfully staged lemons on my kitchen table to show that yes, I am indeed using lemons in these lemon bars.

All joking aside, these lemon bars were made possible by the backyard of my dear friend Sharon (whose lemons we did not use to make hot toddies during her bachelorette because it was way too hot in our cabin to even think about drinking a hot drink) and eggs passed down to me by my mom, who gives me half of her refrigerator every time she goes back to Taiwan. For some reason I don’t like cooking eggs in the morning and I don’t really eat lemons regularly (who does…) so my solution was: lemon bars!

I used this recipe that I had used before from Smitten Kitchen. Unlike times in the past, though, I actually followed directions to the best of my ability and chilled when asked to chill and cooled when asked to cool. (Generally I am not a very patient person.) I also spent a long time carefully spreading the bottom crust evenly across my baking pan, which I think was larger than was suggested because it took a lot longer and more effort than I thought it would.

The results: delicious! I used the “thinner lemon layer” option because I didn’t want as much tartness, which turned out to be a good thing because my pan was very close to overflowing when I poured the lemon curd in. I’ve been diligently eating one (okay, sometimes two) (okay, sometimes three) lemon bars each day because I made so many. But I’m not complaining.

I still have many, many lemons left and many, many eggs, so I’m already thinking about what to make next – my new roommate Jessica moved in and she and her boyfriend are following the keto diet so I’m thinking if there’s anything I can make that they can also enjoy! I’ve found a few recipes for keto lemon pound cake, so that may be coming up next!