Description
This easy lemon bars recipe is made with 5 ingredients, including lots of freshly-squeezed lemon juice to make these lemon squares nice and tangy and not overly sweet.
Ingredients
Scale
Shortbread Crust Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup cold butter, diced
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- zest of 1 lemon
Lemon Filling Ingredients:
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper; set aside.
- Combine all of the crust ingredients in a food processor. Pulse until the mixture reaches a fine crumble consistency. You want the butter to be well combined, but to stop before the mixture turns into a ball. (Alternately, you can combine the crust ingredients together in a mixing bowl with a pastry cutter or a fork.)
- Sprinkle the crust mixture evenly into the prepared pan. Then press the mixture down firmly to form an even layer.
- Bake the crust for 20 minutes, or until it is lightly golden on top.
- Meanwhile, whisk the lemon filling ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl until combined. If your powdered sugar or flour are too chunky or there are lots of bubbles whisked into the filling, feel free to just pour the filling through a fine-mesh strainer to get it nice and smooth before adding it to the crust. (But if there are a few little clumps, that’s ok too!)
- Once the crust is done baking, remove the pan from the oven and immediately pour the lemon filling on top of the hot crust. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 18-20 more minutes*, or until the lemon filling has set.
- Remove the pan from the oven and transfer to a wire baking rack to cool until the bars reach room temperature. Then transfer to the refrigerator and let the bars chill for at least 2 hours.
- Sprinkle the tops of the bars with extra powdered sugar*, if you would like, then slice and serve!
Notes
*If baking these bars in an 9 x 9-inch baking dish, cooking time will be a few minutes less.
*If you would like to add on decorative lemon slices, I recommend adding them just before serving since the lemon juice soaks out fairly quickly into the powdered sugar topping. To minimize the juiciness of the lemons, I blotted my lemon slices briefly on a paper towel before adding them to the bars. :)
