I'm back for a quick post! Been quite busy lately...

When trying to relax on TikTok, I came across a lovely mini recipe for lemon bars. I hadn't ate lemon bars before, but it looked so simple, and was a very small recipe, so I thought, why not give it a go?!

end result!

If you're like me, and don't exactly know what a lemon bar is, it has a shortbread crust, and a lemon curd topping :D
This recipe is split into two bits, making the shortbread crust, and then the lemon curd topping.

Recipe for shortbread crust:

• 1/4 cup of butter
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 2/3 cup of plain flour
• pinch of salt

Recipe for lemon curd topping:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/4 cup of lemon juice
• 1/2 tablespoon of lemon zest
• 1 tablespoon of plain flour

If you're like me, and didn't have any fresh lemons, I just used a lemon juice bottle from the cupboard, with no lemon zest in this recipe!

Steps for shortbread crust:

So first, I softened the butter in the microwave, on full power for about 15 seconds. This meant that the butter wasn't liquid, but was easier to mix.
Next, I combined the butter with the sugar, beating it together until it was creamy. This definitely would have been easier and less tiring with a electric hand whisk, but I didn't have one :(

butter and sugar, now creamy

As you can see in the above picture, there's really not a lot of mixture. This is because the recipe is halved of the original, and I chose it as I wasn't sure if I would actually like the lemon bars.

sift the flour

After the butter and sugar are completely creamed together, it was time to sift in the flour and salt, then combine! You need to rub it together with your fingers, and it's quite a dry mixture. Because I used my hands, I couldn't get a picture of the results of this step.
But after you're done, you pack the crumb mixture into the bottom of a loaf pan.

the loaf pan

Here's a picture of the uncooked crust packed into the bottom of the loaf pan. As you can see, it's quite pale, and still has a crumbly texture. So you really need to make sure you pat it in!

With that in the pan, the next step was cooking the shortbread crust! For this, the original instructions put it into the oven at 325 Fahrenheit, for 18-20 minutes. I use Celsius, which google said was about 162C.

While that's cooking, I started on the lemon curd.

Steps for lemon curd topping:

To start, combine the sugar and (sifted) flour together.

sugar and flour

Definitely not the most exciting step really, but next, is to combine the lemon juice and zest into the mixture. Of course, as I mentioned before, I only had store-bought lemon juice so I just used this, no zest!

adding in the lemon juice

For some reason, before mixing the lemon juice, I decided to add in the 2 eggs, and to whisk it all completely together!

the raw lemon curd

And with that, the raw lemon curd is ready!!
So, normally, you wait for the shortbread crust to be done from the oven, and you pour the lemon curd right on top of it, while the crust is hot. I couldn't tell when the crust was ready to be honest, so I kept on delaying it.
Then, when I thought, oh this is ready, when I poured the curd onto the shortbread, I made a complete mess - which is why I didn't put a picture 🤣

Anyways, if you manage to carefully pour the lemon curd on top of the shortbread, you then bake it for 18-19 minutes, at the same heat as before.

it's cooked!

Here's what mine looked like after cooking! As you can see, super yellow. Not sure how people get that see-through look. Maybe it's the yolk of the eggs?

After waiting for it to cool, I sifted some icing sugar on top, to give it a nicer finish

icing sugar topping

another picture

And it was done! Really liked them, very refreshing from the taste of the lemon, and I liked the combo of the shortbread.

Hope you like it!