Madhouse Recipe : Strawberry Lemon Bars

Well, as I told you earlier, I came home from the farmers' market with a whole crateful of strawberries this morning, so my mission for the day has been thinking up ways to use them up ! Here was our first creation : Strawberry Lemon Bars, which is a recipe I found on the No Recipes blog. I tweaked the recipe to fit in with what we had in the Madhouse Kitchen, so I'll give you our version below - do click through to see the original recipe though, it may be even better than our version !

Strawberry Lemon Bars

ingredients :

for the pastry base

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup rolled oats

pinch of salt

1/2 cup of icing sugar

12 tablespoons of butter or margarine (or half and half which is what I used)

for the filling :

1 cup sliced strawberries

1/4 cup caster sugar

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup caster sugar

3 tablespoons plain flour

1 tablespoon lemon zest (optional)

2/3 cup lemon juice

icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180°. Line a square pan with foil. It needs to be at least an inch deep.

Mix the flour, oats, salt and icing sugar together in a bowl. Mix in the butter/margarine until it starts coming together but stop before it amasses into a big ball.

Pour the pastry mixture into the tin and squish it flat until it covers the base completely. Make sure it goes right into the corners. Put into the oven for about 20 minutes until it starts going golden brown. Meanwhile, slice the strawberries into a bowl (you can use the bowl you used to make the pastry dough if you want to save on washing up !), add the caster sugar, stir and put to one side.

In another bowl, beat the eggs, stir in the sugar, add the lemon zest and flour then mix in the lemon juice.

Remove the pastry base from the oven and arrange the strawberry slices on top. If there is any juice left in the bowl, add it to the lemon eggy mixture and stir. (My mixture went quite pink so I added a little yellow food colouring but this is purely optional.)

 Pour the lemon eggy mixture over the strawberries and carefully transfer it to the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the center of the lemon bars is firm but springy to the touch. 

Remove from the oven and allow them to cool completely. Slice, then dust with icing sugar 

The sweetness of the strawberries is nicely offset by the sharpness of the lemon juice and the fruit gives the bars a lovely moistness. The pastry base is crumbly and almost biscuit-like, contrasting nicely with the softness of the eggy filling.

Very nice indeed and this would also work with other combinations of flavours - I think I may have to try apple and cinnamon instead of strawberry and lemon next time.

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

World Baking Day recipe : Spiced Apple Cake

Mother's day recipe : Mini Carrot Cakes with Philly Icing

Recipe : Banoffee Cake