Lemon Bars

Lemon bars - the staple of bake sales, church functions and cookie exchanges... unless you're me. Gasp! I know. Several of my friends looked at me with wide eyes when I said I'd never, ever had a lemon bar before making these. Somehow these sweet and tangy treats managed to elude me for 20 years. Luckily, my friend Trent (I swear, I have other friends too.) asked if I could whip some up, thereby ending the two decade drought of lemony goodness.

So I turned to Tastespotting, and again was brought to the perfect recipe by the perfect picture. Smitten Kitchen's reworking of Ina Garten's lemon bars looked and sounded amazing. You should take a look- her pics blow mine out of the water. Granted, I didn't have any powdered sugar on hand to prettify the bars... but her photo skills are still light-years ahead of mine. And beyond all that, she even came up with an option for increasing the "lemoniness" of the bars. Great success. I needed to recreate these to fix this gaping hole in my life.