Lemon Squares

Makes 24 squares
Total price: NY $2.02
Price per square: NY $0.08


I’ll be honest: I didn’t love these and didn’t at first think them blog-worthy. When I mentioned to our guests that I wasn’t thrilled with these and apologized,* though, they all told me I was wrong and that they were delicious. Well, sure, duh, of course they would because our friends were not raised by wolves. I wasn’t fooled.


But then they all went back for seconds, then thirds and then the next thing I knew the plate was empty. Now, the LBUH and our friends are polite, but they’re not that polite. The LBUH in particular is certainly not clear-the-plate polite if he’s not loving something, he’s more of the thank-you-for-your- efforts-and-scrape-the-plate-into-the-dog’s-dish-while-you’re-not-looking kind of polite. So I let the empty plate convince me: these may not be to my own taste**, but they’re a crowd-pleaser. Indeed, one of our friends even whipped out his fancy professional camera and took some pictures of his own in an effort to convince me to post about these. How could I let his pics*** go to waste?



Ingredients

• 1 stick butter (NY $0.75)
• 1 ¼ cups sugar (NY $0.43)
• ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour (NY $0.12)
• ½ cup whole wheat pastry flour (NY $0.14)
• 2 eggs (NY $0.33)
• 1 lemon, juiced and zested (NY $0.25)
• ½ teaspoon baking soda (staple)
• Confectioner’s sugar (staple)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and lightly grease an 8 inch square baking dish. Cream the butter with ¼ cup of sugar, and stir in ½ cup of the all purpose flour and the whole wheat pastry flour. Press the mixture into the prepared dish and bake for 15 minutes. (It won’t look cooked at this point, but that’s OK! Its going back into the oven a little later.) Allow partially baked crust to cool slightly as you prepare the filling.


Beat together the eggs, lemon juice and zest, baking soda, remaining granulated sugar and 2 tbsps of all purpose flour. Pour filling mixture over the prepared crust. Return to over, and bake for approx. 20 more minutes. (The squares should be firm at the edges, but still soft in the middle.) Cool, then sift confectioner’s sugar over the top, to taste. Cut into squares and serve! If, unlike me, you end up with leftovers, store these in the fridge.


Adapted from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything

* As I seem to recall Amanda Hesser noting in Cooking for Mr Latte, doing so isn’t terribly polite, as it interferes with your guests’ enjoyment of their meal. Also, its generally akin to fishing for compliments. I give myself a pass on this one, however, as we’d gathered friends expressly for the purpose of vetting recipes for the blog. Thus, our friends came prepared to be asked for and to express frank opinions, as well as braced for experimentation.

** My beef with these was that I like lemon squares that are more little squared off pieces of lemon tart than like a lemony bar cookie. This recipe creates more of a bar cookie square. If that sounds delish to you, than you’ll like these. In the meantime, and with all due respect to the generally infallible Mr. Bittman who put these in the bar cookie section of his very handy tome, I’m still on the hunt for the perfect tart-like lemon square recipe. I’ll let you know once I’ve found it!

*** All together now: OOoooooOOOOOoooo! Pretty!


Nutrition Facts
Amount Per Serving

Calories 102.8	Vitamin A 2.9 %	Iron 1.6 %
Total Fat 4.3 g	Vitamin B-12 0.8 %	Magnesium 1.3 %
Cholesterol 27.9 mg	Vitamin B-6 0.9 %	Manganese 6.5 %
Sodium 58.9 mg	Vitamin C 1. 5 %	Niacin 1.7 %
Potassium 23.4 mg	Vitamin D 1.2 %	Phosphorus 2.2 %
Total Carbohydrate 15.4 g	Vitamin E 0.8 %	Riboflavin 2.6 %
Fiber 0.4 g	Calcium 0.5 %	Selenium 6.2 %
Sugars 11.1 g	Copper 0.8 %	Thiamin 2.5 %
Protein 1.2 g	Folate 2.1 %	Zinc 1.0 %