Lemon Bars

With a buttery shortbread crust and a zippy, bright lemon curd filling, these Easy Lemon Bars are so good and perfect for a summer treat. Tart and sweet, just like they’re meant to be!

I told you a couple of weeks ago that I was on a lemon kick and now you can see that I wasn’t lying! We’ve been making lots of savory lemon recipes, like our Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup, Greek rice, and Lemon Pepper Chicken Marinade.

But when it comes to dessert? This lemon bars recipe is probably my favorite lemon treat and I think you guys are going to love it too!

The buttery shortbread crust pairs so perfectly with the slightly tart, slightly sweet filling. I think this tastes like lemonade in dessert form! (Speaking of lemonade, I’ll just drop this right here and you do what you wish with it…Strawberry Lemonade Vodka!!)

This recipe came from a Taste of Home magazine and I made zero changes – it’s perfect as is!

Ingredient Notes:

For the crust:

Flour – You’ll need all-purpose flour for this recipe.

Butter – The other main ingredient in the shortbread is butter. Start with softened butter for easy mixing. We like to use a good quality butter in recipes like this, since the crust has so few ingredients. We want that butter flavor to shine.

Powdered Sugar – You’ll need some of this for dusting over the lemon bars too but we’re also adding it to the shortbread crust to sweeten it up.

For the filling:

Dry Ingredients – To prepare the lemon filling you’ll need a few dry ingredients including flour, sugar, and baking powder. Plus some more powdered sugar for sprinkling on top of the lemon bars.

Wet Ingredients – You’ll also need a couple of large eggs as well as some freshly squeezed lemon juice! You could use the bottled kind but in this case fresh is definitely the best.

Lemon Zest – Since we’re using fresh lemons here we might as well grate some lemon zest too! It’s going to really up the lemon flavor in these dessert bars so don’t skip it.

See the recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.

How To Make Lemon Bars:

Crust: You’ll start by preparing the bottom layer of the lemon bars and it starts with a simple shortbread dough. You’ll need flour, butter, and powdered sugar. Beat those together with a mixer. Depending on the brand of butter you use, your dough will either come together or it will stay a bit sandy and crumbly. No worries either way – it’s going to bake up perfect.

Press: If your dough came together into a soft ball of dough, press it into the bottom of your prepared pan. If you have sandy, coarse crumbs, dump those into your prepared pan and use the bottom of a clean drinking glass to press the dough together to form the crust. Bake the crust while you whip up the lemon filling.

Combine: To make the lemon topping, you’ll whip up a couple of eggs, sugar, flour, lemon juice, zest, and a little baking powder.

Bake: Pour the lemon filling right over the cookie base and pop all this back in the oven for 25 more minutes. The filling should be just slightly jiggly when it has finished.

Finish: You’ll want to let the lemon bars cool on a wire rack for an hour before giving them a generous dusting of powdered sugar.