A Couple That Bakes Together...

I'm not much of a cook or baker.  Art has always been the one most comfortable in the kitchen.  I need my recipes precise down to 1/8 of a teaspoon.

Our lemons have been ripening by the bagfuls lately and then we also received a lot of tasty avocados from our neighbor, Wini.  She also brought us some chocolate chip cookies with coconuts in them.

Well... that got me thinking about baking something.  December seems to be the month full of baking and sweets, none of which is good for me, of course.

Then I ran across a lemon bar recipe that I found in the newspaper a long, long time ago. 

Art on the other hand found his avocado pie recipe on a Rachel Ray website and then modified it to suit his inclinations.  Mom said both our offerings were delicious.  What?  Did you think she'd actually tell us she liked one better than the other?

Art used two of those huge, round purple avocados for his recipe and a huge Hawaiian Meyer lemon too.

It was beautiful and very tasty.  He makes his own crusts too.

People have told me his mom was the best baker in Honokaa.

Whenever I've tried recipes from online or newspaper, it was pretty darn lousy.  I don't want to admit how many wonderful sounding dishes I've had to toss.

It was with more than a little trepidation that I decided to give this recipe called Luscious Lemon Bars a try.

It was written by some ladies called Three Many Cooks.

Here it is:

Crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

½ cup confectioner’s sugar

1 stick (8 Tbs) butter, melted but not hot 

Filling:

2 large eggs

¾ cups sugar

1 ½ Tbs. all-purpose flour

6 Tbs. juice from 2 lemons

2 tsps. Finely grated lemon zest

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees.  Spray an 8 inch x 8 inch baking pan with vegetable spray.  Fit an 8 inch x 16 inch piece of heavy duty foil across pan bottom and up the 2 sides as foil over hangs to pull bars from the pan.  Spray foil with vegetable cooking spray. 

Mix flour, salt, confectioner’s sugar in a medium bowl; stir in butter to form dough.  Press dough into pan bottom (the bottom of a measuring cup dipped in flour helps).  Bake until pale golden, about 20 minutes.

While pastry bakes, whisk eggs, sugar, flour, lemon juice and zest in a medium bowl.

Remove pan from oven.  Add lemon mixture and continue to bake until just set, about 20 minutes longer; let cook in pan for a few minutes and then using foil handles, pull bars from pan and set on a wire rack. Cool until room temperature.  Cut into squares and serve.

Yield:  16 bars (143 calories per bar)

My lemon bars were not quite as super sweet or tart as some I've tasted, but I was very pleased with it.  Between Art's pie and my bars, we managed to use quite a few of the lemons.  We even used the skin of the lemons for zest.  That was fun!

We shared our treats with our neighbors so we didn't ingest too many calories.  That way we were all happy!