Getting tangy

Recipe: Lemon bars

Most challenging moment: Zesting lemons

Lessons learnt: Extracting lemon zest is hard work but well worth the effort

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Mrs. J, a reader of my blog, said via email last week that I must put up the recipes of the things I cook in order for the tips to be useful. When I started this blog, I did consider this but deliberately decided against doing so because I didn't want this to become a 'recipe blog'. However after due consideration to Mrs J's suggestion I have decided to slightly update the format of my posts and hopefully this will provide an improved point of reference for my readers. (Please do write in and let me know what you think, Mrs. J)

So, lemon bars - I once tried to make them a LONG time ago (probably over 10 years ago now) with very, very sad results. That incident is best not revisited at present, but when I saw this recipe in the Hummingbird cookbook, my heart lurched with fear... could I tackle my old nemesis? 

I started by taking a picture of what the bars looked like in the cookbook. 

Then I got down to business. The most crucial task in the entire recipe was to procure 5 tsps of lemon zest. I started with 5-6 lemons and a hand grater and assumed it would take a few minutes... ummm, not so! It took an hour, 17 lemons and one slightly zested finger - when it was all done, I was quite ready to break out into the Hallelujah chorus.

With the zesting complete, I moved on to making the crust, which was simple enough. It involved butter, sugar, flour and half the lemon zest. I whizzed it all up in my mixer and miraculously found exactly the right sized pan to put it in - 22cm by 33 cm (just as the book suggested). I also used a fork to make pock marks in the crust before baking it for 20 minutes. This stops the creation of air bubbles in the crust.

Next I made the filling with the leftover zest, some eggs, 100 ml of lemon juice and some sugar, and poured it over the crust. The whole thing went into the over again for 40 minutes, was cooled and refrigerated and finally came out looking rather wonderful :)

My family loved them so much, we cut them up into smaller squares and gobbled up quite a few. If I had to make these again, I would change... nothing! The recipe was perfect, the bars were lovely but next time I will consider paying someone to zest the lemons for me!!