So light and refreshing, these lemon bars make a great dessert all summer long or anytime you crave a buttery cookie crust topped with a luscious lemon cream filling 
I’ve never been a lemon bars kind of girl. A look at my recipe index and you can easily guess I’m the girl who reaches for the chocolate treats first.
Of course there are some citrus desserts like this lemon curd tart or meyer lemon tart and let’s not forget about this lime tart but it wasn’t until recently that lemon bars landed on my to-bake list. I was skeptical at first, secretly I was mostly praying they don’t turn out that good so I can mix a batch of brownies but to my surprise they turned out amazing!
The buttery cookie crust topped with a tangy lemon filling brighten my day a few weeks ago. You’ll have to excuse the rushed photos, all I could think of was eating another one of these irresistible bars. 
Making these bars is a little work, I’m not going to lie.
You start with the buttery cookie dough. As you can easily guess you’ll need butter, lot of butter, flour, sugar and an egg yolk. The same ingredients to make shortbread. But unlike shortbread where you mix the ingredients in a food processor, this time you cream the butter with the sugar, mix in the egg yolk and fold in the flour.
The dough will be soft and a little sticky, but don’t worry. With your fingers or the back of a spoon, press the dough in an even layer on a bottom on a baking pan. Refrigerate.
While the dough is chilling, it’s time to make and bake the crumble. 
The crumble is a mixture of butter, sugar, honey and flour. Pulse a few times in the food processor until it resembles pea-size crumbles and spread them on a cookie sheet. Bake for few minutes.
The crumble will spread turning into a ginormous thin cookie but don’t worry. Once baked and cooled, you’ll be able to crumble it.
For the melon creme filling, please use fresh lemons. No lemon juice from a bottle or juice squeezed few days ago. The fresher the better. You want bars bursting with lemon flavor, don’t you?
The lemon filling is a little tricky. Well, not really, it’s just you need a candy thermometer. And I highly suggest you use it and not guess the temperature. Aside for fresh lemons you’ll also need eggs, sugar, butter and gelatin.
For best results you have to follow the recipe directions. They sound intimidating but if you read the entire recipe before you start you will know what step comes next.
[mpprecipe-recipe:532]
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Happy baking,
Roxana
This recipe sounds absolutely amazing! I will have to try it. I personally like a slight nut flavor mixed with my citrus. I think I will add a dash of almond extract.
I love a good lemon bar, especially in the summertime! These look really good- the filling sounds delectable! 🙂
These bars are so pretty!
Nice recipe. Thank you Roxanna. Happy Day to ya!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE anything lemon, I am kinda lemon crazy! AND these lemon bars are perfection, I need to make them ASAP! Pinned 🙂
Thick layers. Beautiful color. Lovely as always!
These look devine! Thanks for sharing at our Cook it! Craft it! Share it! Link Party. Hope to see you next week 🙂 -Doree
These bars are amazing! I love the sweet and sunny look of them!
Roxana, these are gorgeous! We’ve made lemon bars from scratch before and you are right–they do take a bit of work (but they are so worth it)!
Lemon bars are one of my favorite kinds of bars. I love the thick cookie crust and crumbly topping on these, yum!! Pinned!
These look over the top delicious! Yum!
These lemon bars are just gorgeous!
Wondering what size baking pan you used for these squares? Was it a 9×13? They look delish.
Hi Kinga,
Thanks for catching that. Yes, I used a 13X9″ baking pan.
Lemon Bars are my favorite! Sadly I have never gotten around to making them. They look absolutely delicious Roxana. 🙂
Yummers! These lemon bars look delish, Roxana!
Hi Roxana
Would it be possible to use grams and liters instead of “cups”, “sticks”, etc.? They are incomprehensible here in Europe…. A cup can be of all sizes, from an espresso cup to a tea cup…
For us it is impossible to use your recipes because of this problem…
Such a pity, because some of them really look delicious 😉
Lilly
Hi Elisabeth,
I just updated the recipe, adding grams to most of the dry ingredients. Hope it’s better now for you. If you have other questions, please let me know. I’m happy to help you
Roxana
Tks Roxana, these lemon bars really appeal to me 😉
The recipe looks amazing ! But what size of baking pan would you use ? A 9×13 or a square one ?
Hi Asheley,
I apologize for my mistake. I’ve used a 13X9″ baking pan. Just updated the recipe form.
Thanks,
Roxana