Lemon Bars

Or Look! Something Worked! Maybe This Cooking Stuff isn't Bullshit After All!

I love lemon desserts. Cookies, cake, lemon bars, lemon, I don't know, pudding, whatever. Damn, that is tasty stuff! So, lemon bars.

Make some dough - butter, flour, sugar. Done. Mash it into the bottom of an 8x8 pan. I only have one shitty disposable one, but it's better than none, so....done. Lemon sauce mix: gotta get some finely grated lemon peel and some lemon juice. Got a lemon. This is where it got fun.

I don't have a zester or a fine grater. I have one grater and it's basically standard size. But it grated that peel up pretty well. I was making this while the oven was heating and while the squash was burning, so I was a little distracted and didn't get a shot of the grated peel. Cry me a river.

I needed three table spoons of lemon juice. Oops! I don't own a juicer thingy. Like the rolling pin thing, I improvised. I took the top from my pepper shaker:



Cleaned it really, really well, and used it as a juicer thingy:





And it was full of pulp and seeds, so I grabbed a coffee filter and filtered that stuff out.





The trick is when you're draining it, you press it (don't squeeze it) very gingerly with your fingertips so the filter doesn't break. Then you have some fine lemon juice:



It doesn't look like much, and I don't know what you're supposed to get from a lemon, but I got the three table spoons I needed with about half a table spoon left over. I drank it in victory, and regretted it immediately.

I couldn't cook this with the squash because it needed a 325 oven and currently my possessed, crazy ass oven was at about 425...ish. So I put the lemon mix in the fridge (it had eggs in it and I didn't know how long that squash was going to screw around in the oven before I could get the lemon bars in, and I didn't want it to go bad.)



I put the dough in to cook, it came out fine. I'm setting the timer for half what's recommended, then checking on it to see if my oven has vetoed my food.

I poured the lemon mix on the decent dough bottom, and it came out okay:







I wasn't expecting the dull crust on top, but when I cut it open, it was nice and custardy. Also, when I cut into it I realized I'd forgotten to grease the pan. Oh well.

It's also pretty sweet, but that might just be me. They were pretty good, though. If I can tone down the sweetness of it and buy a real 8x8 pan, I'd make these more often. They're pretty easy and quick.

And I'm basically really proud of myself for thinking of that juicing trick.