Lively Lemon Bars

Tonight, we ate out (Chinese food, yum!) and I made dessert!! I felt like something fruit, so I decided on lemon bars (which I actually meant to make last night, but I took a 2 hour nap instead). From The Pampered Chef's It's good for you cookbook.

Ingredients:
~Crust~
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup 70% vegetable oil spread  [I used 1/2 c. sweet cream butter since that's all I had in the fridge)
~Filling~
3 lemons (I used dried lemon peel and lemon juice instead of actual lemons)
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 egg whites
2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tsp powdered sugar (for topping)

Recipe time estimate:
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 37 minutes

Step 1:
Preheat oven to 350F. Spray Square Baker (PC) [I used a glass square baking pan] with nonstick cooking spray.

Step 2:
CRUST. Combine flour and powdered sugar. Add vegetable oil spread (I added the sweet cream butter, softened); blend using a pastry blender (I used a fork) until misture resembles coarse crumbs.

Step 3:
Press crumb mixture onto bottom of baking pan. Bake 17 minutes; remove from oven to Stackable Cooling Rack (PC).

Step 4:
While crust is cooling, zest two lemons to meason 2 teaspoons zest. Finely snip zest using Kitchen Shears (PC). This is where I just measured out 2 tsp of dried lemon peel.

Step 5:
Juice lemons to measure 1/2 cup of juice. This is where I used store bought lemon juice.

Step 6:
Combine lemon zest, juice, and granulated sugar; whisk. Add eggs, egg whites, flour, and salt; whisk until blended.

Step 7:
Pour filling over crust, spreading evenly. Bake 20 minutes or until filling is set (I baked for an extra 10 minutes to set the filling; probably took longer due to different pan than recipe called for). Remove from oven to cooling rack. Cool completely.

Step 8:
Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Cut into bars.

My actual cooking time:
Prep time: 16 minutes
Cooking time: 47 minutes
Total time: 63 minutes










Overall, rather tasty. Not the best lemon bars I've ever made, but not bad. I highly recommend using fresh ingredients (ie: lemon), as the bars taste a little more bitter than I think they should.

Doing this verbatum to the recipe would make each bar (16 total) 170 calories.

I'll try it with fresh next time, and may make an addendum to this recipe post. We'll see!