Hmm. I was going to start off by saying how much I love lemon squares but in reality I haven't really eaten many in my lifetime and when I made these squares, I only had a tiny corner of a square. I blame that on the fact that I saw how much melted butter went into the shortbread crust, not on the tasty factor!
I had fun zesting the lemon. I don't have a zestor but it was easy enough to use a vegetable peeler and then mincing the peels. My hands smelled so lovely after this part of the task!
This recipe is incredibly simple. I think there were only a handful of ingredients: lemon, butter, flour, sugar. I have to confess that after pressing out the shortbread I realized I'd forgotten to add all that lovely lemon zest so I had to pull it up and add the zest. Oops! According to the reviews for the recipe, the lemon zest is really necessary to add flavour.
All prepped and ready for the initial baking. I read other reviews that said to add the butter cold so that it makes little crumbles but I found the melted butter to be fine. If you're counting calories, don't make this. I added a large soup bowl of melted butter to this mixture (ew).
The finished result. I have to say, the lemon was a bit too soft. It made the bars incredibly hard to slice and all the edges were all ragged and crumbled from running the knife through it. I don't know how others cut their squares but mine were definitely wet. I added icing sugar to the tops to try to disguise the ugly, ragged edges but the wetness of the lemon just soaked the icing sugar. Please don't be overzealous when adding the lemon juice or your squares will be too tart! Mine were a bit on the tart side, oops!
If you think you're ready, here the Lemon Squares Recipe I used.
