Sunday, November 4, 2007

Lemon bars!



Couldn't resist buying these citruses from DeSantis Bella Frutta at the market. They're a couple of Meyer lemons (the "it" lemon of the moment) plus a baseball-sized fruit they were calling sweet lime. Meyers come in a bewildering array of different colors (the ones at Whole Foods, for example, are light orange) and cover a pretty wide flavor spectrum ranging from almost tangerine-like to puckeringly sour. These had green mottling that I've never seen before and were very mild. The sweet limes had a very strong citronella scent to them that I actually found kind of off-putting, but the juice was delicate and very slightly sweet.

I suppose I could have made a batch of lemonade, or some lemon-ginger tea, but instead, I decided to give lemon bars a shot even though I was horrified to find out that lemon bars (which I love) are basically a big pile of sugar, eggs and butter. To give the bars a veneer of healthfulness, I made a whole wheat crust with crushed almonds (also from DeSantis!). Doesn't this look wholesome??



OK, so maybe it doesn't, really. Here's what's in it:

1/2 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup wheat germ
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup almond butter (so far so good...)
and
1 stick of frozen butter, cut into small pieces

Yeah, yeah, butter is full of cholesterol and will cause your arteries to harden, but without it, the crust would have been the consistency of dirt. And no one wants to ruin tasty lemon curd with dirt.

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