blog #287 >> Lemon Stuff

For those of you requesting this recipe, here it is!
The lemon bars came from allrecipes.com with some alterations.
The candied lemon peel came from Better Homes and Gardens.
And the tart was my clever, but not clever enough combination of the two.

Lemon Bars

2 cups flour
3/4 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup soft butter

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 tea. baking powder
1/4 cup flour
3/4 to 1 cup fresh lemon juice
(3-5 lemons depending on their size)
2 T. lemon zest
(or however much 1 or 2 lemons will make, depending on taste.)

Preheat oven to 315 degrees F. Mix flour and powdered sugar together, add butter. Press into pan. Prick with fork. Bake at 315 degrees for 15-18 minutes until crust is slightly brown... a little tiny bit golden. You're gonna bake it some more so don't over do it.
Now make the filling. Mix eggs, sugar, baking powder, flour, lemon juice, and zest. Pour on top of crust. Increase oven temperature to 350 degrees. DON'T FORGET THIS! Bake for 20 minutes. You might want to tent them with foil if they're getting too brown. Let cool completely and dust with powdered sugar. Eat and enjoy.

Candied Lemon

Thinly slice one lemon.
Boil in 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup sugar for 15-20 minutes.
(I boiled mine for about 45 minutes.)
Let dry on parchment.
(To speed things up I baked mine in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes and decreased the temperature to "warming" and left them in there for about an hour.)
You can also dip them in sugar just before serving.
(Basically these are really easy and there's no wrong way to make them.)


My poor tart... I'm sorry I ruined you.
It was good in theory... Since I was short a 9x13 pan, I thought I'd try out my tart pan, which worked marvelously for lemon bars. And then I thought instead of sprinkling the top of it with powdered sugar, I'd layout some mint leaves and candied lemon slices and encase them with the leftover simple syrup from the candied lemons... Well that part worked alright, and looked beautiful, but soon I realized that even though the simple syrup was cooling off, it wasn't thickening like I thought it would. In hindsight I should have added some corn starch before pouring it on top to ensure it would thicken... but I didn't think of that. Normally my simple syrup gets pretty thick on it's own. But I think the lemon juice made it thinner than usual. Whatever the case, I did my best to get it to thicken after I had poured it. I tried sprinkling extra sugar on top, but it just soaked it up. And the only other thing I could think of to fix it, was to throw it back in the oven and try to cook down the syrup some more... Well, I carefully took it off the plate and placed back onto the pan. Then, back in the oven it went. Previously the lemon custard layer had protected the crust from the simple syrup layer. But when it was back in the oven, it all melted together and soaked into the crust making it soggy. Then it broke apart when I tried putting it back on the plate... At least it tastes good.

T