Lemon Bars

All of my roommates have been away doing various things in different parts of the country for a couple of weeks. I wanted to make a little something to welcome them all back. 'Who doesn't love coming home to baked goods,' I thought. I quickly realized, the very health conscious, medical professionals to be probably don't really care about having baked goods around the house.

But hey, more for me!

At the market the other day I picked up some very attractive lemons and thought I could make some lemon bars. I tried using Ina Garten's recipe but yet again I didn't have all the ingredients.

Here's what happened:

Crust:
2 sticks of salted butter.
1/2 cup of sugar
2 cups of flour
1 Tsp of lemon zest. *
1 squeeze of a lemon

Filling:
6 large eggs
3 cups sugar
1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice.**
1/2 cup store bought lemon juice.
2 tsp of lemon zest
1 cup flour

Confectioner's sugar to dust on top.

1. Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment.
2. Sift the flour and add slowly to the butter until combined.
3. Take the dough and press it into a buttered and floured 9x13x2" baking sheet. Make sure to pressed it in as evenly as possible.
4. Set oven to 350 degrees (I stuck the pan with the crust into the freezer for just as long as it took my oven to pre-heat,10 minutes)

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes and then let cool.
6. While the crust is cooling put the whisk attachment on electric mixer and combine eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and flour.
7. Pour mixture on top of cooled crust and bake for 30-35 minutes.
8. Let cool before cutting and dusting with sugar.

* Why should the filling have all the lemon fun?
** 2 Large lemons gave left me with 1/2 a cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice. Thankfully I had some store bought lemon juice on hand which worked really well. These same lemons only left me with about 3 teaspoons of lemon zest. I still came out with a delightfully intense lemon flavor.

These were fairly simple and came out great with huge lemon flavor.

I would suggest for next time:

-Adding some ground ginger or fresh grated ginger to the crust for a more complex flavor. (this is what I will try next)
-Adding a thin layer of raspberry jam before adding the filling for lemon raspberry bars.(9I made my mouth water just thinking about that.)