The Art of Perfection: A Lemon Bar Story

Oh, what a heartbreak it runs to the edges of the your sheet pan and then fills in underneath the crust oh what a heartbreak all right. The flavor I think wasn't going to be the winner anyway it's not lemony enough yeah it's just really really mild so here's the sinking feeling I'm having in my gut that adjustment that I made where I reduced the flour by 1 tablespoon and then I added one tablespoon powdered sugar was that my detriment did it need all four tablespoons of flour and 3 tbsp is not going to be it wow I'm really nervous now I think we'll be okay but I don't know I'm scared. Think it happened here too you can see it's inverted fully upside down this is going to be so depressing.

This episode Kendra fails at making lemon bars for two full days all right so here's the thing it tastes great. We need all of that flour we're going to take the powdered sugar back out we're going to adjust the sugar and the salt content and that's going to be it all right. We're doing it one more time we upped the salt in the crust from the last time and I don't think it was enough so we're going to do slightly more salt so now I'm making my filling we're doing the full four tablespoons of flour and we're increasing the granulated sugar slightly more sweetness so that balance is a little better. We'll check on that in 20 minutes okay we are having a day I opened up the oven at our time it was soup it was totally sloshy liquid the gas went out the ovens got up it was not the right temperature anymore so we cranked it and got it to set and it looks honestly fine but not perfect because it had this weird blip of not the right temperature in the middle I talked to Hannah about it and she thinks that the oven being screwed up is also to blame for our earlier mishaps.

The upside down lemon bars she was like there's no way that reducing by 1 tablespoon of flour would have created that and the problem was the oven this is not the one because when the temperatures go all crazy you can't that's not a recipe you can account for. We are actually going to revisit milk version too we're going to try it again less the powdered sugar I think and just that 3 tablespoons of flour slightly saltier crust and I think with a real oven that is the right temperature we're going to use our best oven which is back there we're going to get our lemon bar today I really think we will I'm going to very quickly put that together get it in the oven and I'll be back here as soon as it's done.

She baked she chilled and here she is my heart is racing right off the bat I'm feeling super good because the reason why this was so awesome to me when I pulled it out of the oven is that that one fewer tablespoon of flour visually even made such a difference. It is but it is less firm and that was exactly what I was going for and I can see it in the texture that's the case and I am flooded with relief about that these are so nice I'm delighted to report it was an oven issue the pastiness is gone I was like do I believe that I haven't put it in my mouth yet and then I did and I believe it. It not only delivers on that sour sweet the ratio crust to filling is great the the cuts are really nice and the ingredients list is eight ingredients long and it's really quick to make.

The roller coaster you've been on today I really have been oh my gosh first of all what a thing of beauty really nice yeah oh that's a 3 to1 ratio right there look at her jiggle oh my God I love how rounded the lemon flavor is but you still get The Punchy tart that you want out of a lemon bar. The crust is fantastic the cook time on the crust the added salt it's not reading salty it's just reading more delicious I mean this is exactly what you want out of a lemon bar eight ingredients that's amazing but it has like a touch of creaminess which I love the milk it's the milk it's crazy and that's what makes it different from other lemon bars we have on the site already. We don't make a curd we just whisk a mixture together that includes milk pour it on the pre-cooked crust and bake it off it is phenomenal this is my perfect lemon bar for a few reasons I think the flavor is perfectly balanced between sour and sweet and to achieve that I did not have to work that hard if you want to make this recipe and I really hope you do please visit bona.com or the Epicurious app the link is in the description below and you too can have the literal fruits of my literal labor

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI take risks and I try different things all the time it has never gone this badly in any recipe I've ever done it has never gone this badly I spent the last two days making all these lemon bars so that I could make this it takes a lot of trial and err to make a recipe worthy of being published on bone Appetit today I'm going to show you how I developed my perfect lemon bar from what I can tell there are about four classic ways to make lemon bars and we're going to try them all today first I'm going to make an identical crust for all four versions and once we pick a technique that we like we can go in and finesse the flavor from there it's a super easy press in shortbread crust it's like a shortbread cookie this configuration is based on a tar crust that I've used before I just wanted to use something super easy to create a standard CR Cress for us to start with we are going to throw these guys in the oven at 325 for about 25 minutes while those are in the oven I have three main goals for today one is a filling that perfectly balances sour and sweet keeping a lot of that robust lemony flavor but in a perfect balance is tough to achieve second is I want a crust that stands up to the filling and that's important because I don't want things to fall apart when you bite into it I don't want filling to squidge out I want everything to feel perfectly together and related my last goal is a clean slice it's an Aesthetics thing I want it to be gorgeous I want it to be beautiful I want you to feel proud of it to put it out on a plate for guests and part of that for me is really crisp angles four crusts have baked now I'm going to start making the fillings which is where each of those four versions are going to diverge first up is a cooked filling that gets chilled it is my go-to lemon curd recipe thickened a little bit with starch it's based on a old Epicurious lemon curd recipe all sorts of versions of curd all come from like this sort of Base ratio and I'll let it chill in the fridge for about 4 hours second method I'm going to try is Key Lime Pie style which is sweeten condensed milk egg yolks and citrus juice it is a standard key lime pie filling made with lemons instead poured into the crust baked and then chill but I think it being milk based and not butter based is going to yield like too creamy of a filling and not as like acidic Punchy the third method is a twice cooked filling the exact same recipe as the first lemon curd I made but without the starch because instead of putting it in the fridge to firm up we're going to bake it I'm excited to try this one because I think it might be like really firm the main reason why my gut disqualifies this version is because you make the cooked kurd you pour it into the crust and then you bake it it's just fussy if you have to cook the thing twice it's got to be really worth it to me the fourth method is a raw filling made in a food processor then baked this is based on a lemon tart recipe that I developed for BA I think technique wise this one is going to be my favorite because I really like the cleanliness of everything happening in the food processor to me that's really nice my one concern is the tart that I've made using this technique it's not a lemon bar so I think the expectation of flavor is slightly different so my guess is that the filling isn't going to taste as lemony as I want and that's the one place where I think we may run into some trouble with this one okay all four are here they have all cooled and been chilled they're very different looking and I have a lot of thoughts and I'm scared about what I'm thinking this is the curd that all we did was make the curd and throw it on there in the fridge it's not a lemon bar if it doesn't have a powdered sugar top I think next one this is our keyme pie style it's a little more darker yellow than our first guy that's a nice look this is number three our twice cooked filling this is where I feel a little heartbroken this one looks the best and it is the one I am most angry about because it takes the most effort and I don't want this recipe to be super effortful and in the break I talked to Chris Morocco and he was like all my life I have tried to make a lemon bar recipe that doesn't involve being twice cooked and I've never succeeded so what that means to me is that we need to figure out what our mission is because if when we eat this it is indeed the best is what we're after the best or is it the simplest we have to think about what our mission is and last one this is the food processor uh-oh okay it's toasty roasty on the edges which is interesting and it's got this baked top you can see but the inside is quite yellow now we do some analysis okay number one it is delicious they're deeply lemony crust is fine crust is delightful cookie the top is like fully you know it's just cured I smeared it right off which means you cannot stack them they probably won't sit out at room temperature for very long while this was delicious it might be just to tender and too delicate for our purposes number two key lime pie version delicious not a lemon bar so Dairy forward like lemon ice cream the lemon is there but it's it's so cloaked in this richness of the milk it just doesn't give me lemon bar number three twice cooked that's a great lemon Barb I don't feel that these two are very different in terms of flavor I think the texture is really nice much more set than it's forend okay and this is our weirdo food processor it has the firmest top like look at that the top just peels off which is crazy but this texture is more like a Jammy spread and I do like that it holds up like you could stack these in a box but the flavor is much more muted it's like a lemon muffin all of these have merits in their own way so what we have to figure out is what is it that we want our lemon bar to do and then work backward from there when I am developing recipe and I don't know the answer I have to confront the source this is the first one the kurd refrigerated really bright lovely piercing lemon quality there is a softness to that set though soft like they're going to be delicate will not travel this is Kean pie version wow the quality of the Citrus flavor is really weird it's like it's almost like off it's so creamy but it's like it's muted the lemon and it's like really dulled the edges of the lemon twice baked so it's the exact same curd as this but minus the one teaspoon of starch it's a little overly sharp I think for a lot of people they'd say oh this is a more sweet sour balance yes exactly I think like which is one of our goals the balance Ste is is still optimal on the end this is the fourth one food processor filling I mean visually you've lost something it's not as lemony but it's not bad and the set is very nice what if you weren't using the food processor and you were just working it together by hand in a bowl do you think that would give you enough but without like all of that aration necessarily making it so yeah this one for flavor is winning MH it's the best overall of what you have here this to me skin not withstanding sure very promising and I feel like this world world is where a lot of people want to be you've room to I think to experiment like with like fat in the form of like yeah all the eggs all of the yolk also your starches if you can kind of clean up the visual I think that's like that's pretty good this is why we have these tops thank you I feel ready I feel a direction is forming I'm going to attempt a whisk in a bowl pour it on and bake method so this style but no Sweden condensed milk this style but no food processor to yield something that tastes more like this is it possible we don't know but I'm very excited to just like get one banged out and see what it will be I'm making the same crust as before but I'm reducing the dry ingredients in the butter slightly but keeping the yolk the same so what I think that's going to do is create a easier dough to work with so it'll have a little bit more moisture in it a little less crumbly and a little more snap now I'm going to make two slightly different versions of the filling the first one follows some of the ingredient list of the curd but we're not going to cook it first on the stove we're just going to whisk it together in a bowl what we're going to do to start us off is give ourselves the best opportunity for like a irated fluffy mixture so what we can do is whisk our eggs in sugar together to try and get some like nice brothier texture before we add in everything else while that is baking we'll start on round 2 V2 the second version deviates from the curd slightly higher amount of fat more egg yolks rather than full eggs and a slight tweak on the sugar amount as well it's all yolks it's all yolks we'll just name her all yolks all yolks is what happens in the key lime High version so I liked that set level but is it that way because it's interacting with that sweet and condensed milk will I not be able to approximate that same set level with butter and sugar I don't know so that's why we're trying it food processor version had one and A4 cup sugar for Less eggs so I'm going to go with one and 1/4 cup sugar on this one I'm going to whisk it a little bit and I'm going to see what happens okay and now is my moment where I think if adding the flow is the way and I think it is the way this guy is going to go in a 325 oven we'll see I come to you a battered woman these didn't work and that's okay we had no idea what would happen and this is what happened this sort of very gooey very Brown thing look this skin that just fully comes off ew okay so this was our attempt to make a non precooked version with a whisk and no sweetened condensed milk and we're learning there's a reason why such a lemon bar has never been published delightful it looks aess as they say on Great British baking show that's not how it should go this is the all yoke version she did not work I don't even think like I I don't that's not this isn't food what is that on top what is that on top great question like like what's crazy is like that is the crust right underneath this is the crust because all of the filling has gone to the sides everyone watching this is going to be like how did she get this job why did she get to work at Bon of petite if this is what she does it's a great question I'm trying my best here's the plan moving forward tomorrow off camera I'm going to make a bunch of crusts because I want to be able to come in tomorrow morning and hit the ground running cuz we know the crust works and instead we're just going to do lots of types of filling I'm going to do some reading tonight I'm going to do some research it's going to be great hello it is day two and I return a changed woman I did some reading last night when a lemon bar gets that skin on top it is the result of air bubbles from the eggs escaping out the top as it bakes so when I was like we have to whip it a bunch to get air into it that was wrong that was the opposite of what we needed to do basically I have two trials on Deck I want to do one that uses milk give it that sweetened condensed milk feel and I want to do one that uses part powdered sugar in addition to the granulated sugar I'm going to start with the version where we try adding milk it's going to include sugar with the zest massaged in I do think that's going to help us bump up our lemon flavor without having to add any extra juice some eggs some flour lemon juice the milk taking the place of the butter as a dairy component that's going to balance out in terms of the amount of fat we need and a little bit of salt so it's pretty simple and paired back but I think it's going to work next one is going to be our powdered sugar version the only liquid will be the eggs and the lemon juice so that makes me feel like it can have even more eggs so we're going to get all of that liquid that added moisture that we need plus a little extra richness from an extra yolk so I think we might go five egg crazy the powdered sugar it's doing double duty number one it's in our crust already so it's not a new added ingredient which I love from a development perspective and because it contains starch I'm hoping that it will do some of my stabilizing work for me I have one clump of powdered sugar in here that I'm going to get out I'm going to massage that Clump out and 2/3 our flour I got to say I don't think this order was right because I don't like adding the flour at the end like this cuz it means I have to whisk harder than I would like to fully incorporate I don't like the way it's looking I want to do it again I'm worried that there's like little Flex of stuff not fully Incorporated flour and I want to change the order that we mix so I'm going to do that eggs granulated sugar this time I'm sifting the powdered sugar to avoid any of those clumps we're going to do four tablespoons of flour sift it in all right looking much better than our first batch now this version I'm just going to pour over our crust and then we'll bake this one off too okay I'm really excited these two to look really nice we've got really nice yellow brightness no crazy hazy goopy topping which is awesome a little bit of bubbling which I think we can address by maybe knocking our pans the next time which is a way that people can release Bubbles at the top before you bake so let's start with our version with milk oh yeah to me that looks really nice if we go with this direction there are some slight tweaks in texture I think we went four tablespoons of flour 1/4 cup and I think we can go down to three because it's very well set but there's a little bit of like that mouth feel of thickness and pastiness but the flavor is really nice in general the cuts are have been really clean the filling doesn't squid out anywhere which is great so now we're going to try this powdered sugar version really nice good color again is so interesting the filling was so thin it was so viscous it flooded around the crust so you can see there's a layer of the filling that seeped underneath the crust here in the corner the flavor is nice the absence of the milk makes it almost too lemon forward the powdered sugar purported to bring a setness because of the starch to the mixture but it did not do that the this is not the way to go and I want to stick with the milk version this I think is near perfect it's really close it's a tiny bit thicker of a filling than I want it to be I think reducing the flour ever so slightly and tweaking the flavors by maybe adding a little bit of preserved lemon is all that this needs to totally shine Chris isn't in today and when that happens Hannah is the one who makes the final call K oh my gosh so Sunny so Sunny ooh it's really ni it's well rounded in its tartness it's not just so sharp though you get Tangy moments it's not like reading Dairy but it's reading just round yeah texture of the lemon bar is great I don't know that I want preserved lemon here preserved lemon really wants to make itself known totally and this is so nice and uh well rounded if you add preserved lemon I might Up the sugar a bit cuz it's already like just sweet enough which is nice but I wouldn't mind even like a touch more the look is great let's go harder on the crust and by harder I just me longer time in the in the oven I think we're going to nail it at the next one I really no I'm so excited my feeling was that the filling felt a little bit too thick kind of did not feel that way and liked the consistency of the filling I think that means I can reduce the amount of flour by less than what I thought I'm going to make two new crusts that are the same as before but with slightly longer cook time so that they're a little bit crisper and can stand up to the filling now I'm going to make my two fillings first up is what we're calling milk 2.0 compared to the first milk version the changes to this one are 1 tbsp less flour to just get rid of that very subtle sort of like pasty note and 1 tbspoon added of powdered sugar drop it ever so gently like this and that helps pop any of those little bubbles that are left now we're going to make our final filling which is just a vanity project at this point I want to try one with preserved lemon just to see preserve lemon is lemons that are cured in salt so it's extremely potent extremely salty it's kind of wild and so powerful here they are our two milked versions we're going to start with preserved lemon since that one is a wild card all right we got a little bit of crackage yeah this is very very tender M lot of filling squidging so this is the cookie and the filling is on the bottom it's upside down this happens when your filling is overly runny it runs to the edges of the your sheet pan and then fills in underneath the crust oh what a heartbreak all right the flavor I think wasn't going to be the winner anyway it's not lemony enough yeah it's just really really mild so here's the sinking feeling I'm having in my gut that adjustment that I made where I reduced the flour by 1 tablespoon and then I added one tablespoon powdered sugar was that my detriment did it need all four 4 tablespoons of flour and 3 tbsp is not going to be it wow I'm really nervous now I think we'll be okay but I don't know I'm scared I think it happened here too you can see it's inverted fully upside down this is going to be so depressing this episode Kendra fails at making lemon bars for two full days all right so here's the thing it tastes great we need all of that flour we're going to take the powdered sugar back out we're going to adjust the sugar and the salt content and that's going to be it all right we're doing it one more time we upped the salt in the crust from the last time and I don't think it was enough so we're going to do slightly more salt so now I'm making my filling we're doing the full four tablespoons of flour and we're increasing the granulated sugar slightly more sweetness so that that balance is a little better we'll check on that in 20 minutes okay we are having a day I opened up the oven at our time it was soup it was totally sloshy liquid the gas went out the ovens got up it was not the right temperature anymore so we cranked it and got it to set and it looks honestly fine but not perfect because it had this weird blip of not the right temperature in the middle I talked to Hannah about it and she thinks that the oven being screwed up is also to blame for our earlier mishaps the upside down lemon bars she was like there's no way that reducing by 1 tablespoon of flour would have created that and the problem was the oven this is not the one because when the temperatures go all crazy you can't that's not a recipe you can account for you know we are actually going to revisit milk version too we're going to try it again less the powdered sugar I think and just that 3 tablespoons of flour slightly saltier crust and I think with a real oven that is the right temperature we're going to use our best oven which is back there we're going to get our lemon bar today I really think we will I'm going to very quickly put that together get it in the oven and I'll be back here as soon as it's done she baked she chilled and here she is my heart is racing right off the bat I'm feeling super good because the reason why this was so awesome to me when I pulled it out of the oven is that that one fewer tablespoon of flour visually even made such a difference it is but it is less firm and that was exactly what I was going for and I can see it in the texture that that's the case and I am flooded with relief about that these are so nice I'm delighted to report it was an oven issue the pastiness is gone I was like do I believe that I haven't put it in my mouth yet and then I did and I believe it it not only delivers on that sour sweet the ratio crust to filling is great the the cuts are really nice and the ingredients list is eight ingredients long and it's really quick to make the roller coaster you've been on today I really have been oh my gosh first of all what a thing of beauty really nice yeah oh that's a 3 to1 ratio right there look at her jiggle oh my God I love how rounded the lemon flavor is but you still get The Punchy tart that you want out of a lemon bar the crust is fantastic the cook time on the crust the added salt it's not reading salty it's just reading more delicious I mean this is exactly what you want out of a lemon bar eight ingredients that's amazing but it has like a touch of creaminess which I love the milk it's the milk it's crazy and that's what makes it different from other lemon bars we have on the site already we don't make a curd we just whisk a mixture together that includes milk pour it on the pre-cooked crust and bake it off it is phenomenal this is my perfect lemon bar for a few reasons I think the flavor is perfectly balanced between sour and sweet and to achieve that I did not have to work that hard if you want to make this recipe and I really hope you do please visit bona.com or the Epicurious app the link is in the description below and you too can have the literal fruits of my literal laborI take risks and I try different things all the time it has never gone this badly in any recipe I've ever done it has never gone this badly I spent the last two days making all these lemon bars so that I could make this it takes a lot of trial and err to make a recipe worthy of being published on bone Appetit today I'm going to show you how I developed my perfect lemon bar from what I can tell there are about four classic ways to make lemon bars and we're going to try them all today first I'm going to make an identical crust for all four versions and once we pick a technique that we like we can go in and finesse the flavor from there it's a super easy press in shortbread crust it's like a shortbread cookie this configuration is based on a tar crust that I've used before I just wanted to use something super easy to create a standard CR Cress for us to start with we are going to throw these guys in the oven at 325 for about 25 minutes while those are in the oven I have three main goals for today one is a filling that perfectly balances sour and sweet keeping a lot of that robust lemony flavor but in a perfect balance is tough to achieve second is I want a crust that stands up to the filling and that's important because I don't want things to fall apart when you bite into it I don't want filling to squidge out I want everything to feel perfectly together and related my last goal is a clean slice it's an Aesthetics thing I want it to be gorgeous I want it to be beautiful I want you to feel proud of it to put it out on a plate for guests and part of that for me is really crisp angles four crusts have baked now I'm going to start making the fillings which is where each of those four versions are going to diverge first up is a cooked filling that gets chilled it is my go-to lemon curd recipe thickened a little bit with starch it's based on a old Epicurious lemon curd recipe all sorts of versions of curd all come from like this sort of Base ratio and I'll let it chill in the fridge for about 4 hours second method I'm going to try is Key Lime Pie style which is sweeten condensed milk egg yolks and citrus juice it is a standard key lime pie filling made with lemons instead poured into the crust baked and then chill but I think it being milk based and not butter based is going to yield like too creamy of a filling and not as like acidic Punchy the third method is a twice cooked filling the exact same recipe as the first lemon curd I made but without the starch because instead of putting it in the fridge to firm up we're going to bake it I'm excited to try this one because I think it might be like really firm the main reason why my gut disqualifies this version is because you make the cooked kurd you pour it into the crust and then you bake it it's just fussy if you have to cook the thing twice it's got to be really worth it to me the fourth method is a raw filling made in a food processor then baked this is based on a lemon tart recipe that I developed for BA I think technique wise this one is going to be my favorite because I really like the cleanliness of everything happening in the food processor to me that's really nice my one concern is the tart that I've made using this technique it's not a lemon bar so I think the expectation of flavor is slightly different so my guess is that the filling isn't going to taste as lemony as I want and that's the one place where I think we may run into some trouble with this one okay all four are here they have all cooled and been chilled they're very different looking and I have a lot of thoughts and I'm scared about what I'm thinking this is the curd that all we did was make the curd and throw it on there in the fridge it's not a lemon bar if it doesn't have a powdered sugar top I think next one this is our keyme pie style it's a little more darker yellow than our first guy that's a nice look this is number three our twice cooked filling this is where I feel a little heartbroken this one looks the best and it is the one I am most angry about because it takes the most effort and I don't want this recipe to be super effortful and in the break I talked to Chris Morocco and he was like all my life I have tried to make a lemon bar recipe that doesn't involve being twice cooked and I've never succeeded so what that means to me is that we need to figure out what our mission is because if when we eat this it is indeed the best is what we're after the best or is it the simplest we have to think about what our mission is and last one this is the food processor uh-oh okay it's toasty roasty on the edges which is interesting and it's got this baked top you can see but the inside is quite yellow now we do some analysis okay number one it is delicious they're deeply lemony crust is fine crust is delightful cookie the top is like fully you know it's just cured I smeared it right off which means you cannot stack them they probably won't sit out at room temperature for very long while this was delicious it might be just to tender and too delicate for our purposes number two key lime pie version delicious not a lemon bar so Dairy forward like lemon ice cream the lemon is there but it's it's so cloaked in this richness of the milk it just doesn't give me lemon bar number three twice cooked that's a great lemon Barb I don't feel that these two are very different in terms of flavor I think the texture is really nice much more set than it's forend okay and this is our weirdo food processor it has the firmest top like look at that the top just peels off which is crazy but this texture is more like a Jammy spread and I do like that it holds up like you could stack these in a box but the flavor is much more muted it's like a lemon muffin all of these have merits in their own way so what we have to figure out is what is it that we want our lemon bar to do and then work backward from there when I am developing recipe and I don't know the answer I have to confront the source this is the first one the kurd refrigerated really bright lovely piercing lemon quality there is a softness to that set though soft like they're going to be delicate will not travel this is Kean pie version wow the quality of the Citrus flavor is really weird it's like it's almost like off it's so creamy but it's like it's muted the lemon and it's like really dulled the edges of the lemon twice baked so it's the exact same curd as this but minus the one teaspoon of starch it's a little overly sharp I think for a lot of people they'd say oh this is a more sweet sour balance yes exactly I think like which is one of our goals the balance Ste is is still optimal on the end this is the fourth one food processor filling I mean visually you've lost something it's not as lemony but it's not bad and the set is very nice what if you weren't using the food processor and you were just working it together by hand in a bowl do you think that would give you enough but without like all of that aration necessarily making it so yeah this one for flavor is winning MH it's the best overall of what you have here this to me skin not withstanding sure very promising and I feel like this world world is where a lot of people want to be you've room to I think to experiment like with like fat in the form of like yeah all the eggs all of the yolk also your starches if you can kind of clean up the visual I think that's like that's pretty good this is why we have these tops thank you I feel ready I feel a direction is forming I'm going to attempt a whisk in a bowl pour it on and bake method so this style but no Sweden condensed milk this style but no food processor to yield something that tastes more like this is it possible we don't know but I'm very excited to just like get one banged out and see what it will be I'm making the same crust as before but I'm reducing the dry ingredients in the butter slightly but keeping the yolk the same so what I think that's going to do is create a easier dough to work with so it'll have a little bit more moisture in it a little less crumbly and a little more snap now I'm going to make two slightly different versions of the filling the first one follows some of the ingredient list of the curd but we're not going to cook it first on the stove we're just going to whisk it together in a bowl what we're going to do to start us off is give ourselves the best opportunity for like a irated fluffy mixture so what we can do is whisk our eggs in sugar together to try and get some like nice brothier texture before we add in everything else while that is baking we'll start on round 2 V2 the second version deviates from the curd slightly higher amount of fat more egg yolks rather than full eggs and a slight tweak on the sugar amount as well it's all yolks it's all yolks we'll just name her all yolks all yolks is what happens in the key lime High version so I liked that set level but is it that way because it's interacting with that sweet and condensed milk will I not be able to approximate that same set level with butter and sugar I don't know so that's why we're trying it food processor version had one and A4 cup sugar for Less eggs so I'm going to go with one and 1/4 cup sugar on this one I'm going to whisk it a little bit and I'm going to see what happens okay and now is my moment where I think if adding the flow is the way and I think it is the way this guy is going to go in a 325 oven we'll see I come to you a battered woman these didn't work and that's okay we had no idea what would happen and this is what happened this sort of very gooey very Brown thing look this skin that just fully comes off ew okay so this was our attempt to make a non precooked version with a whisk and no sweetened condensed milk and we're learning there's a reason why such a lemon bar has never been published delightful it looks aess as they say on Great British baking show that's not how it should go this is the all yoke version she did not work I don't even think like I I don't that's not this isn't food what is that on top what is that on top great question like like what's crazy is like that is the crust right underneath this is the crust because all of the filling has gone to the sides everyone watching this is going to be like how did she get this job why did she get to work at Bon of petite if this is what she does it's a great question I'm trying my best here's the plan moving forward tomorrow off camera I'm going to make a bunch of crusts because I want to be able to come in tomorrow morning and hit the ground running cuz we know the crust works and instead we're just going to do lots of types of filling I'm going to do some reading tonight I'm going to do some research it's going to be great hello it is day two and I return a changed woman I did some reading last night when a lemon bar gets that skin on top it is the result of air bubbles from the eggs escaping out the top as it bakes so when I was like we have to whip it a bunch to get air into it that was wrong that was the opposite of what we needed to do basically I have two trials on Deck I want to do one that uses milk give it that sweetened condensed milk feel and I want to do one that uses part powdered sugar in addition to the granulated sugar I'm going to start with the version where we try adding milk it's going to include sugar with the zest massaged in I do think that's going to help us bump up our lemon flavor without having to add any extra juice some eggs some flour lemon juice the milk taking the place of the butter as a dairy component that's going to balance out in terms of the amount of fat we need and a little bit of salt so it's pretty simple and paired back but I think it's going to work next one is going to be our powdered sugar version the only liquid will be the eggs and the lemon juice so that makes me feel like it can have even more eggs so we're going to get all of that liquid that added moisture that we need plus a little extra richness from an extra yolk so I think we might go five egg crazy the powdered sugar it's doing double duty number one it's in our crust already so it's not a new added ingredient which I love from a development perspective and because it contains starch I'm hoping that it will do some of my stabilizing work for me I have one clump of powdered sugar in here that I'm going to get out I'm going to massage that Clump out and 2/3 our flour I got to say I don't think this order was right because I don't like adding the flour at the end like this cuz it means I have to whisk harder than I would like to fully incorporate I don't like the way it's looking I want to do it again I'm worried that there's like little Flex of stuff not fully Incorporated flour and I want to change the order that we mix so I'm going to do that eggs granulated sugar this time I'm sifting the powdered sugar to avoid any of those clumps we're going to do four tablespoons of flour sift it in all right looking much better than our first batch now this version I'm just going to pour over our crust and then we'll bake this one off too okay I'm really excited these two to look really nice we've got really nice yellow brightness no crazy hazy goopy topping which is awesome a little bit of bubbling which I think we can address by maybe knocking our pans the next time which is a way that people can release Bubbles at the top before you bake so let's start with our version with milk oh yeah to me that looks really nice if we go with this direction there are some slight tweaks in texture I think we went four tablespoons of flour 1/4 cup and I think we can go down to three because it's very well set but there's a little bit of like that mouth feel of thickness and pastiness but the flavor is really nice in general the cuts are have been really clean the filling doesn't squid out anywhere which is great so now we're going to try this powdered sugar version really nice good color again is so interesting the filling was so thin it was so viscous it flooded around the crust so you can see there's a layer of the filling that seeped underneath the crust here in the corner the flavor is nice the absence of the milk makes it almost too lemon forward the powdered sugar purported to bring a setness because of the starch to the mixture but it did not do that the this is not the way to go and I want to stick with the milk version this I think is near perfect it's really close it's a tiny bit thicker of a filling than I want it to be I think reducing the flour ever so slightly and tweaking the flavors by maybe adding a little bit of preserved lemon is all that this needs to totally shine Chris isn't in today and when that happens Hannah is the one who makes the final call K oh my gosh so Sunny so Sunny ooh it's really ni it's well rounded in its tartness it's not just so sharp though you get Tangy moments it's not like reading Dairy but it's reading just round yeah texture of the lemon bar is great I don't know that I want preserved lemon here preserved lemon really wants to make itself known totally and this is so nice and uh well rounded if you add preserved lemon I might Up the sugar a bit cuz it's already like just sweet enough which is nice but I wouldn't mind even like a touch more the look is great let's go harder on the crust and by harder I just me longer time in the in the oven I think we're going to nail it at the next one I really no I'm so excited my feeling was that the filling felt a little bit too thick kind of did not feel that way and liked the consistency of the filling I think that means I can reduce the amount of flour by less than what I thought I'm going to make two new crusts that are the same as before but with slightly longer cook time so that they're a little bit crisper and can stand up to the filling now I'm going to make my two fillings first up is what we're calling milk 2.0 compared to the first milk version the changes to this one are 1 tbsp less flour to just get rid of that very subtle sort of like pasty note and 1 tbspoon added of powdered sugar drop it ever so gently like this and that helps pop any of those little bubbles that are left now we're going to make our final filling which is just a vanity project at this point I want to try one with preserved lemon just to see preserve lemon is lemons that are cured in salt so it's extremely potent extremely salty it's kind of wild and so powerful here they are our two milked versions we're going to start with preserved lemon since that one is a wild card all right we got a little bit of crackage yeah this is very very tender M lot of filling squidging so this is the cookie and the filling is on the bottom it's upside down this happens when your filling is overly runny it runs to the edges of the your sheet pan and then fills in underneath the crust oh what a heartbreak all right the flavor I think wasn't going to be the winner anyway it's not lemony enough yeah it's just really really mild so here's the sinking feeling I'm having in my gut that adjustment that I made where I reduced the flour by 1 tablespoon and then I added one tablespoon powdered sugar was that my detriment did it need all four 4 tablespoons of flour and 3 tbsp is not going to be it wow I'm really nervous now I think we'll be okay but I don't know I'm scared I think it happened here too you can see it's inverted fully upside down this is going to be so depressing this episode Kendra fails at making lemon bars for two full days all right so here's the thing it tastes great we need all of that flour we're going to take the powdered sugar back out we're going to adjust the sugar and the salt content and that's going to be it all right we're doing it one more time we upped the salt in the crust from the last time and I don't think it was enough so we're going to do slightly more salt so now I'm making my filling we're doing the full four tablespoons of flour and we're increasing the granulated sugar slightly more sweetness so that that balance is a little better we'll check on that in 20 minutes okay we are having a day I opened up the oven at our time it was soup it was totally sloshy liquid the gas went out the ovens got up it was not the right temperature anymore so we cranked it and got it to set and it looks honestly fine but not perfect because it had this weird blip of not the right temperature in the middle I talked to Hannah about it and she thinks that the oven being screwed up is also to blame for our earlier mishaps the upside down lemon bars she was like there's no way that reducing by 1 tablespoon of flour would have created that and the problem was the oven this is not the one because when the temperatures go all crazy you can't that's not a recipe you can account for you know we are actually going to revisit milk version too we're going to try it again less the powdered sugar I think and just that 3 tablespoons of flour slightly saltier crust and I think with a real oven that is the right temperature we're going to use our best oven which is back there we're going to get our lemon bar today I really think we will I'm going to very quickly put that together get it in the oven and I'll be back here as soon as it's done she baked she chilled and here she is my heart is racing right off the bat I'm feeling super good because the reason why this was so awesome to me when I pulled it out of the oven is that that one fewer tablespoon of flour visually even made such a difference it is but it is less firm and that was exactly what I was going for and I can see it in the texture that that's the case and I am flooded with relief about that these are so nice I'm delighted to report it was an oven issue the pastiness is gone I was like do I believe that I haven't put it in my mouth yet and then I did and I believe it it not only delivers on that sour sweet the ratio crust to filling is great the the cuts are really nice and the ingredients list is eight ingredients long and it's really quick to make the roller coaster you've been on today I really have been oh my gosh first of all what a thing of beauty really nice yeah oh that's a 3 to1 ratio right there look at her jiggle oh my God I love how rounded the lemon flavor is but you still get The Punchy tart that you want out of a lemon bar the crust is fantastic the cook time on the crust the added salt it's not reading salty it's just reading more delicious I mean this is exactly what you want out of a lemon bar eight ingredients that's amazing but it has like a touch of creaminess which I love the milk it's the milk it's crazy and that's what makes it different from other lemon bars we have on the site already we don't make a curd we just whisk a mixture together that includes milk pour it on the pre-cooked crust and bake it off it is phenomenal this is my perfect lemon bar for a few reasons I think the flavor is perfectly balanced between sour and sweet and to achieve that I did not have to work that hard if you want to make this recipe and I really hope you do please visit bona.com or the Epicurious app the link is in the description below and you too can have the literal fruits of my literal labor\n"