happy sunday!  i hope wherever you are reading this from had weather as beautiful as it was here in south pasadena today.  while i was only outside for a moment to deliver a couple of items to a neighbor, i enjoyed the natural light that streamed into my apartment.  it made for better photos for what i baked today – lemon bars!

 

both my mom and godmother have lemon trees in their backyards.  it is almost like the trees take turns alternating which one is going to bountiful year to year.  this year, my godmother’s tree is overflowing with ultra juicy lemons.  i love that they are slightly sweet.  they are great additions to water, vodka or to throw down my garbage disposal.  when cooking, i squeeze them over salads and seafood often.  but with so many extra, i decided it would be awesome to try my hand at lemon bars.

 

 

 

 

this was my first time making lemon bars unassisted and i made multiple modifications to various recipes that i found so when i list the ingredients, i will indicate changes i made. the lemon bars are baked in very separate steps so i will list the ingredients that way as well.

 

ingredients for part one:

• 1 cup of softened salted butter (i used salted sweet cream)
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 2 cups of all purpose flour

 

ingredients for part two:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups of white sugar
• 1/4 of all purpose flour
• 2 lemons, juiced (i used two very large lemons that likely had the juice from four normal sized lemons so if you are like me and like these to have a lot of lemon flavor, use more than two if they are not as large and juicy)

 

ingredients for part three:

• as much powdered sugar as your heart desires

 

let’s get started!

1. preheat your oven to 350 degrees
2. mix/blend (i mixed by hand) the ingredients from part one (softened butter, 2 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of sugar).  press into the bottom of an ungreased 13×9 inch pan. ***i realized my 13×9 pan was beat up pretty badly and lined it with aluminum foil – this caused the corner lemon bars to stick a bit which resulted in me ordering this pan from amazon for my next set of lemon bars.  thankfully, the taste was not compromised!
3. bake for 17 to 22 minutes (i did 20) – the color should be a golden brown
4. whisk 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup of flour.  then, whisk in the eggs and lemon juice.  once all together, pour over the baked crust
5. bake for 20 more minutes, then sit on the counter to cool.  as they cool, they will firm up a bit
6. cut into squares and plate them
7. if you wish, dust them with powdered sugar – i certainly did!

 

when it comes to baking, the simpler the better (in my opinion).  i would say this is even more crucial while quarantined so you are not having to run out to the market repeatedly.  this recipe was easy enough for me to do the entire thing from start to finish while on a facetime call with anj.

 

they were sweet with the perfect amount of tang (thanks to those lemons) and the texture was to die for.  i would absolutely make them again and cannot wait for my new pan to arrive.  i know it will make the plating process even easier.  i am a sucker for good presentation so this will be a game changer.

 

if you make them, please let me know how they turn out!

 

xoxo,

k. tap

if you have been on social media at all during quarantine, you have probably noticed people baking all types of things from muffins to pies to garlic bread to banana bread.  there were plenty of recipes i was interested in trying many of them but realized there were so many recipes that required all types of things i would not typically have in my pantry or refrigerator.  that was when my search began.

 

i searched high and low for the most basic banana bread recipe – both so i would not have to make additional trips to the store for ingredients and so i could share the recipe with my students if it turned out well.

 

it definitely did!

 

 

eating on a dime had so many banana bread/muffin recipes to choose from.  i realized that i had enough ingredients to make two loaves.  however, i chose to bake one loaf at a time so i could taste loaf one (in the event something needed to be tweaked) before baking loaf two.  it turns out that the recipe did not need to be tweaked at all in terms of ingredients but i did adjust the amount of time recommended for baking from the original recipe.  the amount of time recommended was not enough for my particular oven but more on that in a moment.

 

here are the ingredients you need for a single loaf:

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas (i used 3 large ripe bananas)
• 1/3 cup of melted butter
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup of sugar (you can add brown sugar if you prefer – i did not because i was too afraid to risk altering it)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of flour

 

now, for the directions:

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. spray a 5×9 loaf pan with cooking spray
3. peel and mash the bananas in a large bowl (if they are frozen, be sure to let them thaw first)
4. once the bananas are mashed, add in the melted butter, egg, sugar, vanilla and salt – be sure to stir this well
5. add in the baking soda and flour and stir well (fyi, i simply mixed everything by hand)
6. pour ingredients into coated pan and bake
7. bake for one hour (insert toothpick in the center of the loaf at the 50 minute mark to be see if it comes out clean and go from there – each of my loaves took roughly 72-75 minutes to bake so it is obviously based on your oven)
8. after removing from oven, let cool on rack before removing from pan

 

 

in addition to how easy this was to make, i loved that it was sweet enough to cure a sweet tooth but not overly sweet so if you wanted to have a slice or two with coffee or tea in the morning for breakfast, you absolutely could.  even on day three, this banana bread is the gift that keeps on giving.  it has not dried out one bit!  for those of you who love the sweet and savory combo, slather on a bit of butter and thank me later.

 

if you try out this recipe, please let me know how you like it!

 

xoxo,

k. tap