Best Lemon Bars Recipe 🍋 Easy Lemon Dessert!!

Welcome back, I'm Jill at TheCarefulKitchen.com and today I'm going to be sharing with you my favorite lemon squad recipe. Now this recipe I have been working on for years. I mean it feels like I've really perfected it and I'm so excited to share. It's this amazing shortbread crust which is like chewy and also like tender and then it's topped with this homemade lemon curd and it is Okay so I have my lemons here and these are some Meyer lemons. If you can't find these in your grocery store then just regular lemons will work great. I'm going to use about four of them to make the lemon curd and I have this little juicer here that I found that is working really good to make lemon juice. I have some eggs, some sugar and then some all-purpose flour and then for my shortbread crust ingredients I also have some flour and some sugar, some salt and then some room temperature butter and I'm going to preheat my oven to 350 degrees. Okay and I'm going to be using a nine by nine baking dish for my lemon bars and I like to use these parchment paper sheets and I'm just going to cut it in half with a knife and then it fits really nicely down in the bottom of my baking dish. I'm going to spray it with some coconut oil. It's my favorite Trader Joe's coconut oil spray that I like to use and I'll coat the bottom of the pan, lay down the parchment paper and then lay down the second piece of parchment paper just in a crisscross pattern and this really makes a simple cleanup and also it's really easy to just lift the lemon bars out of the baking dish when they are all baked and then cooled and ready to be cut and to make the shortbread crust I'm going to be using a food processor and this just really makes it super easy to combine the ingredients. One of the most important things to do is to use room temperature butter and I'm just going to add this to my food processor and make sure the blade is intact and then add my all-purpose flour, my sugar, my sea salt and then I'll just click the lid on and you can pulse it a little bit and mix it until all of the butter is combined with the flour and if I pulse them out here it looks dry but then if you put it in your hands it actually this is the consistency you want. So into that lined baking dish I'm going to add the dough for my shortbread crust and you can just use the bottom of your hands to gently pat the shortbread crust into the baking pan and you can kind of feel with your fingers if you happen to be a little bit of a low spot you want to make sure that you try and get it as even as possible around the edges of your baking dish and one thing that I have found that also helps is if you just kind of push it up to the edges and then to finish it off I like to just use the flat edge of a measuring cup and this creates a really nice consistent shortbread crust so there we go it's ready it's going to go in the oven preheated at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes and just until it's golden brown on the edges. So while that's cooking I'm going to be making my lemon curd and I have a microplane and this really is the best way to get lemon zest it makes just a really nice fine zest and I'm going to use probably about two lemons to get the zest that is needed for my lemon bars and or you could just zest it right there into the bowl but I'm going to add my lemon zest my sugar my eggs I've got four eggs here and then also a little bit of flour and the flour acts as the thickening agent for these lemon bars just makes a really nice consistency and it's kind of a no-fail recipe so this is my lemon juicer and I actually just found this on Amazon it's super easy to use and it gets all of the juice out of your lemon so we're going to need about one cup of lemon juice for this lemon curd recipe and I'm just going to add it to my ingredients and then whisk it together you want to continue to whisk it until it is nice and smooth and actually if you want to you could even add this to a blender and pulse it a little bit but you'll have to let it sit so the bubbles can pop at the end as you can see the crust for the lemon shortbread is just barely golden on the outside and we want to pour in our lemon curd while the crust is still hot that's an important part of the process so that it comes out that and the consistency is even throughout and then I'm just using my finger I just wet it with a little bit of water and I'm going to pop the bubbles on top and then we're going to bake in the oven until it is golden brown on top after your lemon bars have had a chance to cool you can gently lift them out of the baking dish and this parchment paper on the edges just makes it really really simple and if your lemon bars are cooled you'll be able to get a nice sharp edge on the edges of your lemon bars I just use a big knife and this makes it really simple to get a nice clean edge so that every piece looks like it is the middle piece these really are so perfect for a bake sale or for really any party you could cut these a lot smaller for maybe a bridal shower or a baby shower it's super easy to serve at just about any kind of a party I'm going to cut it into about nine squares and then what I like to do is add some powdered sugar to the top of my lemon bars and just do a light sprinkling it makes it so fun to eat and that little bit of like sweetness on top with the tart curd and then that buttery crust oh it is just such a delightful combination this really is the perfect dessert for any family gathering barbecue baby shower bridal shower or just a weekend at home it really makes the most amazing dessert time for this test I mean these lemon bars the shortbread crust and then the ratio to the lemon curd it is so wonderful just like the perfect lemon dessert ready these have been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid I've been expecting this recipe for years these are so fun and easy to make I hope you enjoyed this episode of Epic Cake Cooking be sure to like, subscribe, and follow me here and I'll show you all kinds of fun and easy recipes that you can definitely enjoy see you next time perfection