It's sunny outside and I have the day off, so I think I'll go up to the Gorge and hike around a bit. If I take any good pictures, I may post them here. Or not. We'll see.
In the meantime, I haven't had breakfast yet, so I thought I'd do a brief post about lemon bars, my favorite (perhaps my only favorite) classic 50's American pastry. Ok, I don't know whether they were invented in the 50's or not, but when you think bar-shaped pastries, you think 50's. It's right up there with vaccuuming in pearls.
The difference is that lemon bars are actually good. At least the ones made today are good. I didn't experience the 50's firsthand. The originals were probably made with artificial lemon flavor, yellow food coloring, saccharin, and lard. But today you're allowed to use actual lemons, and that can be quite tasty. It's not the world's most complex taste, but hey, it's dessert, it's breakfast, it goes with coffee, what more do you want?
Seeing lemon bar recipes in old cookbooks is all the more amazing when you look at the recipes surrounding them. On either side, you'll find endless soul-crushing jello molds packed with pineapple, shrimp, and beets; horrific casseroles of ground mystery meat, lima beans, ketchup, and lots of extra salt; a catalog of unnatural acts done with hard-boiled eggs; bland, greyish roasts covered in deep layers of quivering fat...
Wait, I'm wandering off topic here. And it's getting kind of gross, too. So back to the lemon bars, already.
Some lemon bar recipes, from Cooking for Engineers, about.com's Southern food, and the above image, which takes you to a lemon bar recipe in Japanese, believe it or not.
Still don't think they're a sophisticated, modern delicacy? Here are two recipes in French. Convinced now?
Key Lime bars are nice also, btw.
1 comment :
Thank you so much for creating this site i absolutly love lemon bars
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