Much like gingerbread belongs to winter, lemon squares belong to summer.
I've mentioned it before, but Mountain Man and I love entertaining. We look for any excuse to share our love of food with our friends, eating and laughing the night away.
It just so happened that we had a BBQ this past Memorial Day weekend, which I mentioned before, but I'm mentioning it again... this time to display these tart and tangy lemon squares.
As MM fired up the smoker, checking on his various meats throughout the day, I spent the afternoon between the grocery store and in the kitchen prepping for the evening.
The green monster
The product of all my hard work (they're really quite easy actually) were these dessert bars straight from the Baking Bible aka The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. If you don't have this cookbook I highly recommend it...it's amazing.
Lemon Squares
Recipe from King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion
Oven: 350 Bake time: 38 min total*
Fills an 11x13 pan
Crust
1 stick butter, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups AP flour
2 large eggs
Filling
1 stick butter, melted
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 TBS cornmeal
2 TBS cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt
4 large eggs
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (3 lemons)
Preheat oven to 350 and spray baking pan with cooking spray.
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter until light and fluffy.
Add sugar, salt and vanilla, beating well.
Stir in flour and eggs, mixing until blended.
Press dough into pan, pressing up around the edges as well.
Bake crust in oven for 8 minutes (it won't brown too much, it's just setting).
In the meantime, start making the filling.
In a large bowl, whisk together melted butter, sugar, cornmeal, cornstarch, salt, eggs and lemon juice.
Once crust has been removed from oven, pour filling over set crust.
Return to oven and back for another 25-28 minutes or until top and sides have lightly browned.
Once baked, remove from oven and allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.
Lightly dust with powdered sugar shortly before serving.
Happy Baking!
