Tangy Lemon Bars

Here's a recipe for lemon bars that I quite like. I think I have about five recipes for lemon bars that I seem to rotate through and they are all a little different. This bar has a rich, shortbread crust and a tangy lemon custard on the top.

Lemon Bars

1 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups flour

4 eggs

1 1/2 cup sugar

2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 3-4 lemons)

grated zest from 2 lemons

5 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup powdered sugar

Preheat your oven to 350•F.

Chop butter into small pieces and mix together with 2 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of sugar. Blend with a pastry blender or your fingers until mixture resembles soft crumbs. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9x12-inch pan.

Bake the crust for 15-20 minutes in preheated oven until set and golden.

In another bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups sugar and flour. Whisk in the eggs, lemon juice and lemon zest. Pour over the baked crust.

Bake for 20 minutes more. Cool on wire rack. When bar is completely cool, sprinkle with a generous layer of powdered sugar.

Yield: 24 bars

My mom really enjoyed these but she did complain that the crust was too thick - which made sense because she didn't have a 9x13-inch pan so we used a slightly smaller one. The crust is very rich so you don't want it to be too thick. Also - eat these at room temperature as the butter in the crust seems to harden up in the refrigerator and they don't taste as nice. This is a great bar to have English style with a hot cup of afternoon tea!

I picked up two fabulous baking books today and can't wait to get started on some of the recipes.

The first is Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. The rcipes look amazing and she includes lots of fabulous hints on how to get the best results.

The second book is called Small Batch Baking by Debbie Nakos. I thought this would be a fun book to try because as much as I love baking and giving it away to folks who will appreciate it, sometimes I just want to make a special dessert for me and hubby without all those leftover temptations lying around...well...tempting me.

What I'm Reading Now...New Knitting Books

So I picked up two great new knitting books this week - I'm totally in love with these two books and I can't wait to try the projects in them. The first is called Warm Fuzzies by Betz White. For those of you who aren't familiar with Betz - check out her absolutely scrumptious cupcake pincushions. The book isn't traditional knitting...the projects use felted pieces of recycled wool sweaters. What better way to use an old sweater than to turn it into something fabulous!

The next book is called Knitting New Scarves by Lynne Barr. Let me tell you that the scarves in this book are amazing - completely unique and just wonderful. I can't wait to try a few of her unique patterns to give as gifts. These scarves are conversation pieces.

Speaking of knitting - has anyone heard of this game called "Hat Attack"? Essentially you join a group, they send you a pattern for a hat and you have to knit it up and send it to your target as quickly as possible. If they receive the hat before they are finished knitting their own they are "dead" and must post their death on the Yahoo board for this group. I totally missed this but it sounds like a ton of fun (sign-up deadline was February 6th). It is modelled on something called "Sock Wars" which I assume is similar.