lemon bars

Ohmygoodness it’s only Wednesday. This week. Amiright? Thank goodness for good eats, good friends, and dinner dates to keep me occupied when the weather is COLD and excitement from the holidays starts to dwindle.

I almost forgot about WIAW. Because let’s face it, with the holidays, I’ve been less than stellar with my eating. Not so many veggies, too many cookies and I’m feeling it. I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things – but as you can see, my sweet tooth is still somewhat winning! At least I’m getting more vegetables and fruits in my life.

Speaking of veggies, I had eggs and veggies for breakfast again. It has been SO LONG! So here was Monday’s breakfast – egg whites, some sauerkraut, spinach, carrots and cauliflower and broccoli. Yum yum.

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As if that wasn’t enough, I also had a clementine and apple for a snack midway through the morning.

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For lunch, I had prepared some grilled chicken, along with some roasted veggies – cauliflower, eggplant (leftover breaded and baked from my eggplant parm last weekend) and sweet potato – and some sugar snap peas. Yay for veggies!

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For snacks in the afternoon, I had some hard candies (werthers, ginger and these caramel asian candies) and grapes and carrots.

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For dinner, I made a Meatless Monday dish. I know – I had meat for lunch. I’m not perfect. But dinner was a caprese salad and spaghetti squash with tomato sauce and cheese. Perfection.

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And that wasn’t it. I also had dessert- a little bit of this Mitchell’s and a lemon bar that I had baked. Again, I’m not perfect.

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I had a semi-active day — I had run 5 miles in the morning, done a few weights, and tried to get in some steps during the day.

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So that was my Monday! Not a bad first day back. Some questions for you:

What was the best thing you had over the holidays?
Do you like fruity desserts? Like lemon bars?

Once, in high school, I made lemon bars. And every year during the holidays since then, my Uncle Mike requests lemon bars as one of the many desserts we have. I haven’t taken him up on his request – mainly because I haven’t had time to find the recipe, search for a new recipe, and because I’m convinced nobody really likes lemon desserts.

Well, this year, I changed my mind. I mean, I LOVE lemon bars and lemon pound cake and many lemon desserts … so maybe other people do too? And while I was home for the holidays, I was browsing through a cookbook my mom had on hand, I happened to find an easy looking recipe my mom had marked – for lemon bars! I asked my mom what she thought and she encouraged me to try it. After all, Tate’s Bakeshop has some amazing chocolate chip cookies that my mom had replicated (we enjoy their cookies on Fire Island), and my uncle had been asking for lemon bars for quite a few years.

I’m glad I tried them out – they came out amazing! I’ll be definitely using this easy, and fast, recipe for years to come.

Luscious Lemon Bars

Here’s what you need:

For the crust/base:

1 cup butter, softened (I used 1 stick salted, 1 stick unsalted)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners sugar

For the top/filling:

4 large eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
Grated zest from 1 lemon
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup lemon juice (According to the interwebs, you may need up to 4 lemons to make this … I luckily found a LARGE lemon and was able to obtain 1/2 c juice from just ONE!)

Here’s what you do:

For the crust/base:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium bowl, mix the butter, flour and sugar with your hands till the mixture is well blended. I actually used a hand mixer on low to get the butter and flower well mixed, then used my hands to evenly distribute all the ingredients.
Place the mixture in a 9 x 13-inch pan. Pat the mixture evenly on the bottom of the pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

For the top/filling:

While the base is baking, beat the eggs.
Add the sugar and lemon zest. Mix thoroughly.
Add the flour and mix until everything is incorporated.
When the base is done, remove the pan from the oven. Add the lemon juice to the sugar/lemon zest/flour mixture and mix well.
Pour it over the warm base and bake the entire thing for 20 minutes.
When cool, cut into squares or triangles (makes more bars). Sprinkle powdered sugar on top of finished bars just before serving.
Enjoy some of the best lemon bars you’ve ever tasted!

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