Gluten-Free Lemon Bars

Citrus in the Winter

My husband loves citrus. I was going to invent some oatmeal cranberry orange bars.

I was thinking of how I could use our leftover, homemade cranberry sauce. We wanted to make some oatmeal bars or cookies. We found a recipe for oatmeal and raisin bars. We could skip the raisins and use the cranberry sauce somehow instead.

But that didn't seem like enough. Cranberries and oranges go well together. Maybe that was the solution.

And it just so happened that my husband brought some canned mandarins home. Great! How about Oatmeal Cranberry Orange Bars?

Sounded great.

But we didn't make them.

Somehow, we got side tracked and we ended up making Gluten-Free Lemon Bars instead.

I'll have to create some gluten-free oatmeal and cranberry and orange bars some other time. But not now.

Gluten-Free Lemon Bars

I don't know how we got onto Gluten-Free Lemon Bars, but we did. And I'm glad we did. My husband sounded the most eager for these.

We went looking through our recipes for Lemon Bars, gluten or gluten-free. We found some gluten-free Lemon Squares in Reilly's Gluten-Free Baking cookbook.

I like this cookbook. I use it quite a lot and it is the source of my favorite gluten-free pie crust. I've recommended buying this cookbook. It is worth it.

These Gluten-Free Lemon Squares are just what we needed.

Bars. Squares. Trapezoids. Close enough.

First, you mix the ingredients for the crust and pat them into the bottom of a parchment lined pan and bake.

Then you mix up the lemon filling and pour it on top of the baked crust layer.

Then bake again.

Can you see all those tiny open air bubbles on the top of the lemon filling layer? Maybe they just look like bumps, but they are popped air bubbles.

They didn't look so great. It didn't look finished.

I suppose that's why every lemon bar/square/trapezoid I've ever seen is dusted with powdered sugar.

Ah, much better. Much nicer. Much more finished.

I baked my lemon filling layer the minimum recommended baking time and it ended up a bit soft. I might try baking that a bit longer next time.

As for taste, these are tangy and sweet and fabulous! The powdered sugar dresses them up just enough to make them look finished, without looking gaudy. These definitely satisfied my husband's citrus kick.

Well, at least for the time that we still had some left!