Lemon Bars always remind me of middle and high school. Miss Riggs (a.k.a. Kelly now that she’s married!), my Spanish teacher turned dear friend, always seemed to have them on hand for feeding hungry teenagers at school. (Speaking of Miss Riggs….stay tuned for another post involving her tomorrow!) She was also famous for her Caramel Brownies which involved the unwrapping about 40 of those little individual cellophane wrapped caramel candies, but it was SO worth it!
When we discovered our gluten intolerance, there were many things we just stopped eating altogether, and lemon bars were one of those things. It’s not that they’re difficult to make gluten free, but there just seemed to be so many changes and alterations already, and lemon bars were definitely not a priority. Shameful, I know!
Well, fast forward almost 7 years to this past December when I visited my friend Karla for tea in her 1700’s farmhouse. She planned to make me apple crisp, but didn’t have gluten free oats. Determined to make some sort of dessert we could both enjoy, she found a GF lemon bar recipe online, and they were baking in the oven when I arrived. I had forgotten just how delicious lemon bars are!
(Kayla just saw me typing this post and promptly decided we needed to have lemon bars with our pizza and movie tonight. Now she’s busy in the kitchen! )
Here’s the recipe; probably the exact one Karla used that day.
Gluten Free Lemon Bars
Crust:
1 cup rice flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup butter
Mix together rice flour, cornstarch, and powdered sugar. Cut in butter and work thoroughly through the dry ingredients with fingertips until it resembles a coarse cornmeal. Press into an 8×8 baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.
Filling:
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 Tbsp cornstarch
2 Tbsp rice flour
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp lemon peel
powdered sugar for dusting
Beat eggs together. (Whenever I type up instructions for recipes, I think of Amelia Bedelia, and how she might interpret them. I can just see her holding and then smashing together two white eggs with their shells intact…temporarily.) Add sugar, rice flour, cornstarch, lemon juice, and lemon peel, and beat until thoroughly combined. Pour over cooled crust and bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. Put a small portion of powdered sugar in a strainer/sieve and lightly dust the top of the bars once they have cooled a bit.
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