"The Best Lemon Bars" Recipe

Happy Thanksgiving! I figured that Anthony and I would be super busy today and I would not get the time to write a post for today, so this is a post I actually wrote last week. And since it's Thursday, I decided to do a recipe with a mini review.

About a month ago my sister and I went to the flea market to pick up some green tomatoes to make fried green tomatoes (Those were FANTASTIC  one day I will post that recipe as well). While at the flea market, we had lots of fun, we even ate a huge smoked turkey leg, and it was absolutely beautiful outside. When were in the produce section buying the tomatoes I found a great deal for lemons and limes, and I have been wanting to make some lemon bars for a while, so I bought a few and headed home to look for a recipe.

I found one on allrecipes.com that looked pretty good and decided to give it a try and I am SO glad I did because these were the BEST lemon bars I have ever had! And I made them too, so it was a win win.

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 lemons, squeezed (I doubled this amount when I made my bars)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, blend together softened butter, 2 cups flour and 1/2 cup sugar. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9x13 inch pan.
3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm and golden. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/4 cup flour. Whisk in the eggs and lemon juice. Pour over the baked crust.
4. Bake for an additional 20 minutes in the preheated oven. The bars will firm up as they cool. For a festive tray, make another pan using limes instead of lemons and adding a drop of green food coloring to give a very pale green. After both pans have cooled, cut into uniform 2 inch squares and arrange in a checker board fashion.

My lemon and lime bars.

When I made my bars, I cut this whole recipe in half, and made one half with lemons and one half with limes. I also added a few drops of yellow food coloring to the lemon bars and a few drops of green to the lime ones. I added a finishing touch of powdered sugar on top as well.

These turned out SUPER yummy. The lemon bars were very good they had perfect amount of tartness but were still sweet at the same time. The crust was a perfect consistency as well, good and buttery. 

The lime bars were yummy as well, but I think that the lime bars needed more lime, I doubled the amount of lime juice in mine, so I used two limes squeezed for just half the above recipe, I think because limes are smaller than lemons, this may be why more would be needed to create a bar that is as flavorful as the lemon. If I were to do it again, I would put three limes, squeezed in. When eating the lime bars alone they are great, but when eating them with the lemon bars, I could tell how much more flavor the lemon had.

I cant wait to make these again!