LEMON BARSRecipe :
http://www.joyofbaking.com/LemonBars.htmlActual proportions used
CRUST
- 250g butter
- 280g plain flour
- 50g icing sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- vanilla essence
FILLING
- 6 eggs
- 50g plain flour
- zest of 10 lemons
- 160ml fresh lemon juice
- 300g caster sugar
PAN SIZE : 6.5" x 10"
YIELD : 2 pans
TA DAH!
They're usually sold/served dusted with icing sugar (left that out in the photos)
A little something on lemons (from joyofbaking.com)
Women as far back as Louis XIV's court used to eat lemons to freshen their breath and redden their lips. Waverley Root in 'Food' tells of the Roman belief that eating a lemon is the antidote for all poisons. He tells the story of how two criminals were said to have been thrown to venomous snakes but how the one criminal who had eaten a lemon beforehand survived the snakebites.
Long before we knew that lemons contained Vitamin C, sailors ate them on long sea voyages to prevent scurvy. Christopher Columbus carried lemon seeds on his travels to the New World and planted them when he stopped in Haiti. The Portuguese are credited with bringing the lemon to Brazil (about 1540) and the Spaniards for bringing it to Florida (about 1565). By the 1730s Spanish Friars had started to grow lemons in California and by the 1850s cultivation in California was widespread. In fact, California has such perfect growing conditions that it now produces most of the lemons sold in North America.
Unlike apples and oranges, lemons are almost never labeled by variety. There are, in fact, two popular commercial types; the Eureka and the Lisbon. Producers probably don't bother labeling the varieties because they are so similar in size, color, and acidity. The beauty of the lemon
is that its outer skin (rind) is just as valuable as its juice. The skin contains the lemon's oils and perfumes and even before we had graters, Elizabeth David's in "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine" said that "one of the best lemon graters is lump sugar, although Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747) directed her readers to grate lemon skins with a piece of broken glass".
When buying lemons always keep in mind when you want the lemon's zest to look for lemons that have a rough thick outer skin. These lemons have lots of zest that is easier to remove than it is with thin skinned lemons.
Try to pick the ones that have lotsa oil glands (they look like large,open pores on somebody's face!)
What you can do with excess lemon juice :
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article.asp?AID=441389
http://www.rd.com/extraordinaryuses/openContent.do?contentId=23881
The custard literally ballooned during baking, then sank once it was removed from the oven.
