I had a bottle of Nellie & Joe's Famous Key West Lime Juice in my refrigerator that I wanted to use up, so I looked through my cookbooks for some lime recipes. I decided to try Alice Medrich's recipe for "Very Tangy Lime or Lemon Bars" from Pure Dessert. Medrich explains that she often finds lemon and lime desserts to be overly sweetened, and that an esteemed New England cooking magazine once pronounced her lemon bars too sour. I also prefer my lemon bars to have a very strong and borderline sour lemon flavor -- so Medrich's description of these bars as "very special (and very tangy) citrus bars with a tender, crunchy crust" sounded perfect to me!
To make the crust for these bars, you simply combine melted butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, and flour, and then press the resulting dough into the bottom of a pan. The crust is baked alone until it is golden and fully cooked. The topping is made from sugar, flour, eggs, lemon or lime zest, and lemon and lime juice. You pour the topping on the cooked crust and bake until the topping is set.
The photo of the lime bars in the cookbook is quite beautiful -- a pale yellow and creamy-looking topping flecked with green bits of zest. Unfortunately, my bars were not nearly as pretty. As you can see if you look closely at the picture above (click on it to see a larger version), a small layer of whitish foam formed on the topping during baking, and it set firm. After the bars cooled, I wasn't able to do anything to remove the foam, short of scraping it off of the bars -- and I wasn't quite desperate enough to go that far. I was able to eventually disguise the foam with powdered sugar. The baked foam was completely dry, and when I sprinkled on powdered sugar, the sugar did not dissolve. (This is different from other citrus bars I have made, which are often moist on top and capable of dissolving powdered sugar in fairly short order.)
I thought that the texture of the crust was quite good -- buttery, tender, and crisp. The topping was well set and creamy. The topping was very tangy, enough to make you pucker -- but I like my bars that way! However, I was irritated with the way the bars looked. The foam obscured the zest in the bars and was unattractive. I think I will stick to other citrus bar recipes where I haven't run into this problem.
Recipe: "Very Tangy Lime or Lemon Bars" from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
To make the crust for these bars, you simply combine melted butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, and flour, and then press the resulting dough into the bottom of a pan. The crust is baked alone until it is golden and fully cooked. The topping is made from sugar, flour, eggs, lemon or lime zest, and lemon and lime juice. You pour the topping on the cooked crust and bake until the topping is set.
The photo of the lime bars in the cookbook is quite beautiful -- a pale yellow and creamy-looking topping flecked with green bits of zest. Unfortunately, my bars were not nearly as pretty. As you can see if you look closely at the picture above (click on it to see a larger version), a small layer of whitish foam formed on the topping during baking, and it set firm. After the bars cooled, I wasn't able to do anything to remove the foam, short of scraping it off of the bars -- and I wasn't quite desperate enough to go that far. I was able to eventually disguise the foam with powdered sugar. The baked foam was completely dry, and when I sprinkled on powdered sugar, the sugar did not dissolve. (This is different from other citrus bars I have made, which are often moist on top and capable of dissolving powdered sugar in fairly short order.)I thought that the texture of the crust was quite good -- buttery, tender, and crisp. The topping was well set and creamy. The topping was very tangy, enough to make you pucker -- but I like my bars that way! However, I was irritated with the way the bars looked. The foam obscured the zest in the bars and was unattractive. I think I will stick to other citrus bar recipes where I haven't run into this problem.
Recipe: "Very Tangy Lime or Lemon Bars" from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
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