Steve wanted lemon bars for his birthday. I’d never made them so I reached out to some baking friends to find a recipe. Sometimes the best recipes are those you get from friends and family. These Lemon Cream Cheese bars were a definite hit and will make it into our rotation.
For the Love of Bars
Everyone seems to have a good “bar” recipe. It’s one of those things that are usually easy to make and is enough to feed a crowd. There were always bars of some sort on every sweet table growing up. How we don’t have a lemon bar recipe in my family, I’ll never understand. We do have a pretty awesome Margarita Bar… but that’s for another post! A good bar has a great base. It needs to have some texture. It can be cookie-like, or pie crust. Shortbread or granola. Whatever it is, it needs to be strong enough to hold together on a couple of bites. A good bar isn’t just sweet. It can have a bit of sour or salty. It needs some dimension. Which is why these Lemon Cream Cheese bars are great. You get the sweet crust, some tang from the cream cheese and the sourness of the lemon.
Recipes from Friends
My friend HP gave me this recipe for Lemon Cream Cheese Bars. I love lemon. I love cheesecake. So of course I was intrigued. She bakes way more than I do, and everything she makes is amazing, so it had that going for it too! The recipe has a few steps and takes a little patience, but is really super easy. Read through the recipe before you start. I made the crust and put it in the oven and then made the other two components so they were ready to go. You don’t want the crust to brown in the first bake, it needs to be JUST cooked. I did have to prick it with the fork gently right at the end. The rest came together exactly how the recipe reads. Once cooled, I cut it into squares and served with a little powdered sugar on top (to make them look fancy!)
Lemon Cream Cheese Bars
Ingredients
Crust
- 2 cups Flour
- 1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
- 1 cup Butter, chilled and cut into chunks
Cream Cheese Filling
- 8 oz Cream Cheese
- 1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
- 2 Tbsp Flour
- 2 Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla
Lemon Filling
- 4 Eggs
- 2 cups White Sugar
- 1/4 cup Flour
- 1 tsp Lemon Peel, grated
- 1/4 cup Lemon Juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F
- Mix crust ingredients in a bowl. Press into an un-greased 15½" x 10½" x 1" baking pan. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes. Prick with a fork if it puffs up during baking. Remove from oven before it browns.
- Mix cream cheese filling ingredients and pour over partially baked crust. Bake for 6 to 7 minutes, or until filling is slightly set. Remove from oven.
- Mix lemon filling ingredients together, adding the lemon juice last. Slowly pour over the cream cheese filling. Bake for 14 to 16 minutes, or until filing is set. Filling may puff up during baking, but will fall when removed from oven.
- Cool completely in pan before cutting into squares. Serve with a little powdered sugar overtop (optional)
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