Recipe: how to make delicious refreshing lemon bars

These lemon bars are an ideal alternative to lemon pie if you’re a little less precise in the kitchen or don’t have that many eggs (a classic lemon pie sometimes contains as many as six to eight!), but still fancy a deliciously refreshing dessert or snack. Quick to make!

The tip Lindsay from the Love & Olive Oil blog also gives with this recipe is that you can make the whole thing a little less sour by replacing one tablespoon of the lemon juice with one tablespoon of freshly squeezed orange juice. I do like a bit of tang, but it’s still a good tip!

How to make refreshing lemon bars

• Preheat the oven to 180° C.
• Lightly grease a square baking tin measuring approximately 20 x 20 cm (see, I’m not that precise) with butter. This is so the baking paper stays in place.
• Place a generous sheet of baking paper in the tin.
• Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy using a hand mixer or stand mixer.
• Add the flour and salt and mix until incorporated.
• Add it in portions to the tin, pressing everything together until you have a compact pastry base.
• Bake for 20 minutes in the oven, or until the edges start to turn golden brown.
• Remove from the oven, but leave the oven on.
• While the pastry is baking, clean the mixing bowl.
• In the mixing bowl, beat the eggs, egg yolk and granulated sugar on medium speed for about 2 to 3 minutes, until lightly colored.
• Add the lemon juice (and orange juice, if desired), lemon zest and vanilla extract, and sift the flour and baking powder over it.
• Mix briefly until everything is just incorporated.
• Pour the lemon mixture over the warm pastry base and return to the oven.
• Bake for another 18–20 minutes, until the top is no longer wet.
• Remove from the oven and let cool in the tin on a wire rack.
• Refrigerate for at least 2 hours to set before cutting into pieces.
• Dust with powdered sugar just before serving the bars.
• Yumm!

Also read:

• Top hack: how to squeeze a lemon without a knife (and without seeds!)
• Divine in a single word: HEMA’s lemon ice cream
• Recipe: a really delicious lemon cake (and it’s vegan too)

Recipe and images: Love & Olive Oil