Lemon Bars

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Directions:
Sift flour and sugar into bowl. Blend in butter with clean fingertips until well mixed. Pat evenly into the bottom of an 8 x 8 inch baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Meanwhile, beat together:

2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
dash of salt

Pour over baked crust and return to oven for 20-25 minutes at same temperature. Cool on rack. Cut in squares. Sprinkle with sifted, powdered sugar.

Preparation Method: 

For my second home study cooking assignment, I chose to bake lemon bars. I was flipping through recipes in my mom's recipe book, and I saw these and decided it would be something fun to make. I love the taste of lemon, and making these was the perfect thing as we head towards December. I stuck very close to the original recipe, and didn't change anything. For this recipe, I used the biscuit method that we learned in classl.

In this method, I made the crust by using the biscuit method. I had to blend in the butter, or cut it in, with my fingertips until the dough was sticky. For the filling, I combined the wet ingredients, and after the crust was finished baking, I added the filling to that and baked it again. This method really helps to create the flaky texture of the crust. Since I was blending in the butter, it helped to coat some of the flour granules with fat, just as we learned in class. It essentially made the flour granules that were coated with the fat nonpolar, because it couldn't bond with water.

We have used this method in class a couple of times, and it was especially prominent when we created our pies. I remember blending in the chunks of the butter into the dry ingredients. It was a long, hard process, that resulted in a decent crust.

This method resulted in very flaky-textured lemon bars. The only error I encountered while mixing everything together was when I was blending the butter into the flour mixture. I didn't blend it as well as I could have, and it didn't bake as well as a result. The crust turned out very dark around the edges, despite the cooking time. It bubbled up in different spots and little pockets of air were present within it. This contributed to how the overall product of the lemon bars turned out.

Critique:

These lemon bars did not turn out as I had expected them to. The crust was a bit darker than expected, and the air pockets contributed to the taste of it all. The filling on top was very runny, even after it cooled.  I didn't sift the powdered sugar to put on top, which made it look less than desirable. They smelled very zesty and sweet, and once I cut into them, I noticed the many layers within. They were very thin. I took a bite and noticed how light it tasted. The flaky, but dark, crust tasted decent, and the filling added a lot of pop to it. My parents each had one as well, and my mom stated to me that eating them brought back memories to her eating them as a child. My dad eats everything, so he liked it, of course. My sister refused to try it, but I enjoyed them nevertheless.

Assessment:

In my free time, I would not make these lemon bars again. I may make them for a special occasion, but for just a recreational baking project, I wouldn't. The crust was very difficult to get right, and blending the butter in with your fingers is a very tedious process. The baking time of this recipe was very off. 20 minutes to bake the crust was way too much, as I noticed how brown it was getting after only 8 minutes. After I added the filling, it just bubbled up in weird places and made air pockets that were not aesthetically pleasing.

I learned from this experiment how difficult it is to get a recipe exactly perfect, especially when the instructions are very vague. These lemon bars could have gone either way, and I'm just thankful I didn't burn them (too badly).