No more birthdays this week!
Last week I decided to put in a suggestion question at the end of the survey I sent out about my Tiramisu Cookies where I asked my classmates for suggestions about possible things I could make for this project. Pinterest is still my BFF, but there are so many recipes that I thought being able to narrow it down a little bit might be easier… The nice thing about most of the suggestions I receive was that they were mostly things I have never tried to make before, so that was a good place to start.

This week I decided to make Lemon Bars– based on many requests! Never have I ever made them myself, but man have I eaten my fair share of them. In my opinion, there are two kinds of lemon bars; the first being a more solid and chewy lemon curd, and the second being a softer, gooey-er lemon curd. I personally like the second kind more, so when I tell you why I was disappointed with my Lemon Bars this week, I think you can infer why…

I was house sitting for the whole month of February. I got to hangout with a super cool cat and have a huge house to myself. It was great. However. You know when you go somewhere else or live in someone else’s space and you have no idea where everything is or they have different items or utensils than you do at home? I know that feeling well. No electric mixer. UGH.

When I started making these lemon bars, I thought it was going to be easy. I finally found the lemon juicer so I felt like I was on a winning streak.

I had just juiced an entire bag of lemons and I didn’t have enough. I only had one bag of lemons. It was 9pm. But you know what the nice thing about being in Langford is? UberEats. You know what UberEats does? Delivers groceries 🙂 so, online I go to find some bags of lemons that can be delivered to me ASAP. The kitchen was an absolute mess.

There was flour and lemon juice and lemon seeds everywhere. I felt like the air tasted like lemon scented cleaning products.

I took the regular lemons bars out of the oven and let them cool for a little while. I them went to cut them and I was IMMEDIATELY disappointed because I knew that they were more solid and chewy than ooey and gooey. Sad. I cut them into squares and I ate the piece that looked the saddest and tried it. It was okay. Texture was off for me, but too late to do anything about it now. I went to my friend Google and asked what I did wrong and it said I over mixed the filling (is it really filling though? I’m not convinced). Note to self; next time, DON’T OVER MIX.

I suddenly remembered that I had also had to make a gluten free version of these lemon bars… but guess what? No. More. Lemons. So I twiddled my thumbs and ordered more lemons from UberEats and the same guy who delivered my first bag of lemons ended up delivering my second bag of lemons. I gave him a thank you tip 🙂

A million eggs and even more lemons later, I had a regular version of lemon bars and gluten free versions of the lemon bars. The gluten free version was FAR better than the regular version. Classic. Everything I have made so far has been better as gluten free version. Maybe I should stop making 2 and just make them all gluten free. Maybe I should get into the gluten free baking business.

After trying both versions of lemon bars, I felt like they weren’t lemony enough, so with the left over lemons (I actually had some this time) I juiced them and added some icing sugar and made a quick glaze. Turns out finding the perfect balance between sweet and tangy was harder than I thought. I tested the glazed 100 times before I decided to give up and just go with it. I woke up the next morning thinking my throat was sore because of all the lemon juice I had had… turns out it was just a terrible terrible cold that took me out for a week and a half.

Here is a link to my Google Form for the Lemon Bars with the feedback from my classmates 🙂

I had a good time this week- I think I would make Lemon Bars again… but I will NOT be over mixing, that’s for sure!