Lemon Raspberry Bars

I was finally able to go to book club this month! The last time I attended was way back in February when it was held at my own house; the past four months have not-so-conveniently featured a conflict on book club night. This month we read “Born to Run” (subtitle: “A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen”). It was a really interesting read whether you are a runner or not, and I’ll post more about the book and my reactions later this week.

Part of book club involves taking snacks, so I decided to make the lemon raspberry bars that I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago. They were very easy, and very tasty!

First you have to zest a lemon. (Can “zest” be used as a verb? I don’t know, but I’m going to assume that it can.) I had never made anything that required zesting before, so I was very excited. Jose zested while I worked on the graham crackers for the crust.

I don’t have a food processor, so I had to crumble the graham crackers by hand. This isn’t so bad, except it makes your fingers start to feel really weird and scratchy after a while — and you can’t get the crumbs as fine as they’d be using a blade. (You can see my handiwork on the right. Not bad, but perhaps I should get a food processor.)

Anyway, by this time Jose had finished zesting and melted the butter, so we were ready to make the crust.

Ta da! I’ve always heard that crust is really hard to make — and it may be if you’re making a crust from dough. But graham cracker crust is really easy.

Next, you make the filling. I don’t think I’m destined to be a true food blogger, since I inevitably reach a point when baking where I forget to take pictures. That’s why there are always more pictures of the early steps than the later ones. Anyway, this is what things looked like after all the filling ingredients were combined but just before I folded in the raspberries. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup lemon juice. I used the juice from the zested lemon, which filled almost 1/4 of a cup, then supplemented with store-bought lemon juice.

You pour all that onto the crust and bake until the mixture is set. This picture was taken after baking. Could you tell? It still looks liquid-y, but it’s not. It’s actually the same consistency as key lime pie, since the ingredients are almost the same. Byron actually thought it WAS key lime pie (book club was coed this month) until I assured him that it contained lemon, not lime.