Mom’s Tangy Lemon Bars are a true comfort classic. You can blot the top with a paper towel while still warm to remove the froth, but I like it the way it is.
My mother loved lemon bars, and I would always pick one up at Putnam Market in Saratoga Springs before I got on the plane to visit her at her assisted living facility in Austin. She’d divide the bar and eat half in front of me, then save the rest for a future dessert. It was comforting to watch her eat it, and even more so when she offered me a small taste.
On March 19, one of the last days that food establishments in New York were allowed to serve food on the premises, I sat in the window of Putnam Market and watched the diminished sidewalk scene as I ate a lemon bar all by myself. I thought about my mom, about all the challenges right now, and about how good that bar tasted: a brilliant balance of sweet and sour with almost too much of each.
We published our own lemon bar recipe a while back, and were very satisfied with the results which were quite similar to the Putnam product. If you don’t have access to fresh lemons, you can use Lucy’s bottled lemon juice which is reasonably close in flavor and omit the zest which will affect the texture more than the taste. (Lakewood, the brand we mentioned in the recipe post, is marginally better but harder to find.) Warning: you’re going to end up with a lot of lemon bars so make sure you have some folks available to help you eat them.
Lemon Bars after slicing, more than anyone could possibly eat… or is it?
And, we were delighted this week when The Kitchn tried four famous lemon bar recipes—and declared ours the winner! Well, not actually, it was Martha Stewart’s recipe which uses sweetened condensed milk and is definitely worth trying. But when reviewer Amelia Rampe said she was looking for “a sturdy-yet-tender crust” and “a bright lemony filing that strikes the perfect balance between tart and sweet” we were sure she was talking about us.
In fact, all of the recipes she reviewed sound great and depending on how long we are holed up we might make every one of them. Lemon bars are the kind of comfort classic we need right now.
