I Blog What I Bake

I have definitely been on a fruit kick. Summertime makes me abandon heavy desserts. When it’s 95 degrees and humid outside the last thing I want to be eating is some kind of cream based concoction. Although, that’s a lie. The shortbread base of these lemon bars is pure butter. I don’t know what’s heavier than that. ANYWAY.

Lemons go with with just about any berry. I chose blackberries because I have already used strawberries and raspberries in recent posts. These would be amazing with strawberry. I’ll try that sometime soon. Back to the recipe at hand.  The aforementioned shortbread base is phenomenal. You can repurpose this for just about any bar recipe; brownies, blondies you name it. It is super simple to prepare, just so long as you have a food processor.  My advice is to make the blackberry sauce first and leave it to the side until its time to add it to the lemon portion. This recipe comes together very quickly once the shortbread is done.  I have also included some images of plain lemon bars that I made, just in case there are those of you that have no interest in the blackberries.

Blackberry Lemon Bars with Hot Shortbread Base
Shortbread base from www.epicurous.com

Hot Shortbread Base

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut butter into 1/2 inch pieces. In a food processor process all the ingredients until the mixture begins to form small lumps. Sprinkle mixture in a 13×9x2-inch baking pan and with a metal spatula press evenly onto bottom. Bake the shortbread until golden, about 20 minutes. Prepare the filling while this is in the oven.

Blackberry Lemon Filling

3/4 cups fresh lemon juice
Zest of one lemon
1 cup white granulated sugar
4 Large eggs
1/3 cups flour
1 pint fresh blackberries

Pulse blackberries and 1/2 cup of sugar in a food processor until blended. Heat blackberry mixture in a small saucepan over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Press heated mixture through a wire-mesh strainer. Discard the solids and reserve the liquids. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until well combined. Stir in the lemon juice, zest and flour. Pour immediately over the hot shortbread. Take the blackberry liquid and drizzle it over the lemon mixture. Reduce oven to 300 degrees  and bake for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool completely in pan. Once cool, dust with confectioners sugar if you would like.

If you don’t want to use the blackberries, just negate the entire step from the recipe and will have delicious traditional lemon bars. Enjoy!

Printable Recipe:Lemon-Blackberry Bars