- Did somebody ask for a
little drop of sunshine in bar form? My lemon bar recipe is so
easy to make, fool-proof, and full of delicious zingy lemon flavor. The top just melts in your mouth and the bottom is this crisp
delicious shortbread crust, you're gonna love this recipe. Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, were I, John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. These lemon bars are gonna be ready in two shakes of a lambs
tail, so let's get started! First off, we're gonna make
an easy-breezy and delicious shortbread crust for our lemon bars. But before all that,
oven to 350 fahrenheit, get a 9 by 13 baking dish and
line it in parchment paper, parchment paper, parchment paper. You can do this by hand
in a bowl with a spatula, but I'm gonna use my stand mixer just because stand mixer
does a better job than I do and I have one. Into the bowl of your stand mixer and you can sift this out, as a best practice I
always sift everything. So don't really need to, but why not? 300 grams, or two and a half
cups of all-purpose flour. Perfect! Half a teaspoon of salt, in you go, a little bit of balance for the sweetness and two thirds of a cup or about 66 grams of confectioners' sugar. We're going to whisk it up. And no, I do not need my scale anymore. You know, I got an email last week, that I've yet to respond to, telling me that it's actually scales. Is it scales, is that right? Scales? It might be an English thing. And now we can whisk, whisk, whisk, that's all you have to do. Pop it onto your stand mixer now and we're gonna go to town. The bowl is on the mixer,
it's got a paddle attachment and now it's time to add in
12 tablespoons or 170 grams of unsalted, melted butter. Did I say it was melted, it's melted. Turn this on, lock it,
put it on low or stir, and we're just gonna drizzle it in. Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle. You could dump it in, it
doesn't really matter. Let's not go crazy here, it's like shortbread flying everywhere. Okay, that looks pretty good, it kinda is like a crumbly mixture, you can see from what I just
threw on the counter top, but it'll all pat together in the pan. And can you add a little bit of vanilla? Sure, you know I'm the king of vanilla, but in this instance I'm refraining because the lemon flavor
is so like out-there. So I'm using my spatula just to see if there's any bits that
need to be mushed in a little bit more. That looks good. Okay, it's time to dump all this delicious shortbread mixture
into our 9 by 13 prepared pan. Whoa, it's a crumbly
mess, everything's ruined! No it's fine, it's kinda like pastry dough or it looks like it's a
rough and tumble texture, but you're going to tame it
just by patting it together. So let's first kinda spread it out, move it around, couple Virgo tendencies are coming to life right now, things need to be evenly placed. Just use your clean hands
to press, press, press. It doesn't have to be perfectly even, just mostly even. The main thing is that you have some crust at the bottom to protect
our delicious lemon filling and provide a nice contrast of textures. You can use your hands,
you can use your knuckles, you can even use a measuring
cup if you wanted to, but that's a little
but overboard, I think. Make sure to get those corners. And this is why having a
parchment lined baking dish is amazing. The parchment will just lift right out, you don't have to worry at all about things getting stuck in the pan. I've had that happen before with brownies and it's just so sad, so sad. Brownies? Click up here for my fudgy brownie recipe! It's one of my all time favorites and so just fudgy and delicious, it's like the chocolate
version of this recipe, you're gonna love it. Okay, this is totally pressed down. The test would be to show you and say, look, it's totally pressed down. Pop this into the oven at
350 for about 20 minutes. Here's the deal, you could have it be ever so slightly almost golden, or it could be like golden brown, it's totally up to you in how much you want to cook the shortbread crust. I like mine a little bit golden but, we'll see what I'm feeling
like at the moment. While that short crust is in the oven-- While that short-- (laughs) One more time. While that shortbread's in the oven, we're gonna be processing the
sugar and lemon zest together. This'll make all those oils
explode out of the skin into the sugar and it's just amazing. It's optional though,
you do not have to do it, so don't feel bad if you don't want to lug your processor out
or if you don't have one. I went years and years without
having a food processor, because I was like, I don't need one, but then eventually I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try
it out and I love it now. Two cups of sugar and three cups of sugar, at 200 grams that's 600 grams of sugar. Now I'm using a microplane
to zest this lemon. This is a great tool to have, I can include a link in the
description if you'd like, they are so handy. You can like, microplane spices like nutmeg or cardamom if you want, zest different kinds or
fruits and lots of fun things. Okay, zest of three
lemons, get them all naked. Now we're gonna whiz
it up, whiz whiz whiz, until all the zest is broken up and you sugar's gone from white to a wonderful pastel lemon color. (laughs) Okay, lemon--oh my gosh, do you see this? Look at that. So good, it's just like this beautiful, clouds of lemon sugar,
you've gotta make this. Put that aside and we're
gonna make our filling, it comes together so quickly, except for juicing the lemons, that takes the longest unless you have some little helpers on hand,
mine are asleep right now. Now it's time to juice our lemons, you can use a juicer, whatever you want. This is my favorite tool,
it's a little wooden juicer. You wanna have one cup, or 240 mL, of fresh lemon juice, so delicious. I love lemon bars,
they're one of the recipes my mom would make because
she is a lemon-holic, when I was growing up. But, they kinda fell out of
favor for whatever reason so I rediscovered the recipe very recently and have been all about them ever since. These are gonna be a special
treat for Brian and the boys, and for me too, I'll be
snaking on them at night, like gimme a lemon bar! Okay, we got one cup of
lemon juice in there, let's put this aside for a moment and get a big bowl out,
we're almost ready. It all comes together
while that's in the oven and it's going to be
going back into the oven, so let's go! All right, the shortbread
crust came out of the oven now, we want to pour on the lemon filling while it is still warm so keep on moving. All right, carefully remove
these very sharp blades. Now we're gonna dump the sugar in, so fragrant, so much lemon! Look at this, it's just
beautiful clouds of amazingness, could swim in that. Okay, half a cup or 60
grams of flour, in you go. Now give it a good
whisk, whisk whisk whisk, just to distribute the flour. You know I love sifting, but in this case you don't wanna do that just because the zest is
gonna clog up your sifter, it's gonna be kinda annoying. Look at this, that is a lot
of deliciousness in there. Did I mention that we're
gonna put some eggs in here? Yes, this is a giant,
basically a lemon custard we're making, so get to cracking. You could do this in a separate bowl if you're feeling like
you wanna be super safe, but I'm risking it. Whole eggs in you go. We need eight, large,
room-temperature eggs, so keep on going until you're done. Eight large eggs, in you go. We're gonna whisk this up, but you can add lemon juice right now too. One cup of fresh lemon juice. Now it's time to mix, mix, mix, but, you know, be careful
because this bowl is really full. Whisking things is one
of George and Lachlan's favorite things to do in the kitchen, but you've gotta be strategic,
big bowl, less contents. Bowl's very full! Smells so good, and by the by, you can make all sorts of curds, this filling reminds me of
my delicious lemon curd, you can click up here for that video, it is so, just zingy and full of flavor and you can add it into
or onto almost anything. And you can make curds with orange juice, with berry juice, all sorts of things. Once you're sure this is
totally mixed up and homogenous, nice and neat, you can
pour this into the filling. So, looks that way to me,
let's pour it into the filling! And just so you can see,
this is what the shortbread looks like, it's just ever so
slightly golden at the edges. It's gonna continue cooking
with the curd on top. There you go. Last step before it goes
into the oven the final time, we're gonna pour this delicious filling all over our shortbread crust. Mm, amazing! Get it all out, (laughs) I caught it, I caught it. This'll go into the oven at
350 for about 25 minutes, the edges will be like, set-ish and the inside will be
a little bit jiggly, turn it around halfway, as it cools down, it'll set completely, so just don't over bake it because then it gets
kinda rubbery and hard, and nobody likes that. My lemon mega bar chilled in
the fridge for like two hours, we had dinner, et cetera, and now it's firm enough to cut. I wanna show you what it looks
like though, take a look! So in the middle, really really yellow, the edge, just started to lighten up and rise up a little bit. So when it was in the oven, it still jiggled just a little bit, but I knew it would set, you
don't want it to be brown, do not let it brown. If you do let it brown, it's
okay, more powdered sugar. Anyways, let's carefully remove this out. Just get the corners first. And now, for the tricky part,
so tilt it, and there we go. I can peel the paper away now. Just smells like lemon, it's literally a drop
of sunshine in bar form. Paper's peeled away, I'm gonna dust this with
confectioners' sugar now. So just add a little bit
in there, tap tap tap. Somewhat optional, but
I like the way it looks. Now we're gonna cut these, but I wanted to show you
this because you want to dampen your knife
with a wet paper towel, that'll give you a nice clean cut. I like a large lemon bar piece, although you can cut these really small, they're quite delicious and full of zing. Clean your knife off in
between each cut and repeat. These are so perfectly
baked, melt in your mouth, glossy, lemon zingy realness on top, with a crisp, crisp shortbread
crust on the bottom. You're gonna love them. If you like this recipe,
check out my lemon playlist, all my favorite lemon recipes
and you are guaranteed to love all of them if you
like lemons, it's real thing. All right, but now it's time for a bite! So crunchy, so gooey, so much lemon, mm! If you like this recipe, hit
that like button and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video!
For the uninitiated, here's a primer on lemon bars.
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