California · Dessert
Meyer Lemon Bars
- Intermediate
- 75 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- For the crust: 250g flour, 75g icing sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, 225g cold butter
- For the filling: 6 eggs, 400g sugar, 180ml Meyer lemon juice, 2 tbsp zest, 60g flour, 1/4 tsp salt
- Icing sugar to dust
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the crust ingredients to crumbs, press firmly into a lined pan, and bake at 175C for 20-25 min until pale gold. 25 min
- Whisk the eggs and sugar, then the lemon juice, zest, flour, and salt until smooth.
- Pour the filling over the hot crust: this is what fuses the two layers together.
- Bake 25-30 min more until the center is just set and no longer wobbles when nudged. 30 min
- Cool completely, chill, then cut and dust with icing sugar.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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