Life and Lemons

Lemon is my favorite citrus. I think it suffers from an undeserved bad reputation. You know how that quote goes. When life gives you lemons... But really, what is so bad about lemons? I love their bold yellow color. They are tart and proud of it. They do not hide behind superficial sweetness. So anyway, before this blog becomes a diatribe, let me get to the point. The question is, what does one do when she has an excess of lemons?

I bought a bag of lemons for the cupcakes I baked for our weekly office bake-off a week ago and was left with a surfeit of lemons. (The cupcakes, by the way, was a complete hit! :-) I'll share the recipe for the lemon cupcakes with a cream cheese based frosting next time)

How did I use thee? Let me count the ways:

I cut some into thin slices, placed them in my water containers and voila! Lemon water!

I used some to prepare a marinade for my beef chops.

And still I had about eight pieces of lemon left. I checked my pantry and there was flour, sugar, a surfeit of eggs--- all from the baking session I did for the office baking thing.

In the end, with less than an hour of arm work, this is what I did with half of my luscious left-over lemons:


I turned them into Lemon Squares.



Uncut, it looks like a tart,no? I don't have a square baking pan so I baked them in my tart pan instead.

I cut the lemon squares thirty minutes after I took them out of the oven. I know I should have left them alone longer but I needed to pack some to bring to a friend. You can see in the picture that the custard is still a bit too wet, but no worries, as it will firm up after an hour or two in the refrigerator.

This is the base recipe I used:

The Best Lemon Bars Recipe from allrecipes.com

I did tweak it and used four lemons (including the zest) plus I added salt in the cookie batter to give it a slight flavor counterpoint.

Note: Though these lemon bars are good immediately after they've cooled down, they are best after a couple of hours in the ref. The tart-creamy-sweet flavors become more developed and the custard's texture becomes firmer after a few hours of chilling.

So in case life gives you lemons, try making lemon squares! These are super easy to do and will take only an hour max. Enjoy!