LEMON BARS

THE JUICE IS DEFINITELY WORTH THE SQUEEZE

Let me tell you the first rule about baking desserts using lemon. You have to ask yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze; and in this case, it most certainly is! Lately, I've been making a lot of recipes that involve the rind and juice of a particular fruit (i.e lemon and lime) and I can't stress to you how important it is to make sure you use quality fruits. It's almost pointless and a total waste of time to go through an entire recipe using store bought lemon juice or something of that nature. If you're going to cook/bake using lemon juice, please please please juice the lemons yourself--you'll thank me in the end! Also, if you have Meyer lemons readily available to use, definitely use those--they are the most tart and flavorful. My favorite part about these bars is how mysterious they are. Nothing about these resemble lemon bars and one's taste buds are in for a real surprise! They blow people away.

I mentioned in an earlier post found here, that my mother has been gradually sharing her most sacred recipes with me. These lemon bars, she claims, is the best recipe to date! They were AMAZING! They have a shortbread crust with a pecan pie type of filling (think brown sugar gooeyness) that contains both pecans and coconut with a lemon drizzle on top. I made a few mistakes that I actually think worked in my favor. First off, I doubled the coconut by accident because I was distracted. I'm a huge coconut lover so this mistake clearly didn't bother me! My other mistake was that I put the lemon-sugar drizzle on top before I baked the bars leaving a lemony crunchy crust atop. Again, I loved how they came out! Next time I will put the glaze on after they are baked and have it drizzle down the sides. This recipes uses the rind of 5 lemons...yes, you read that correctly, 5 lemons! They were so tart and delicious! My boss is a huge lemon-dessert fan and he rated these top 3 greatest desserts I've made thus far! Unfortunately, again, I cannot expose this recipe to the public because my mother just might have me killed. I feel like such a tease! She made me swear before giving me the recipe that I wouldn't post it! I promise I'll go back to posting recipes that can be revealed!