A few days ago a friend of mine posted a picture of some lemon squares they made and they looked absolutely amazing. Since I was on this baking kick I knew I had to ask them for the recipe. After they sent it to me I got to work and started on this brisk halloween Saturday. Here is the summary of the recipe I used (my friend sent me a picture out of a book she had).
Ingredients:
For the Crust:
- 1 cup of flour
- 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- pinch of cinnamon
- 1/2 cup of cold butter in small pieces
For the Filling:
3/4 cup of granulated sugar
- 2 Tbsps of flour
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp finely chopped lemon zest
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup of lemon juice
- 3 Tbsp heavy cream
- Icing sugar for dusting
Steps
- Preheat oven to 350
- mix dry crust ingredients
- fold in cold butter slowly until even dough forms
- press dough onto bottom of pan
- Bake dough in oven for 22 mins (until lightly golden)
- In a new bowl for the filling mix flour, salt and lemon zest
- Whisk in eggs, lemon juice and cream
- Let crust cool and reduce oven heat to 325
- Pour filling onto crust and cook for 20 minutes
- let cool for 30 minutes
- dust with icing sugar
Thoughts
I was excited to try this new recipe, I added more lemon zest than required because I love the taste of it. I also took a page from my brownie recipe and lined the pan with parchment paper to make it easier to get out after. I made the mistake of mixing the filling ingredients together while the crust was still cooling so they had to sit for a while. I was worried that the acidity from the lemon juice would curdle the cream. It was also hard to get 1/2 cup of lemon juice from one lemon, I thought I would have enough but I ended up spilling some on my counter, (saddest day) and had to use some lemon juice from concentrate from my fridge. The original recipe said to mix the crust ingredients together in a blender but that seemed to create more problems than it solved for me and make a new dish to clean so next time I will just blend by hand in a bowl the same way I would for scones.
