Tag Archives: stay-at-home

I love sweets…who doesn’t? However, since I am careful with my sugar consumption and because I am now on a diet, I limit myself to only one dessert a day. But in spite of that, I still haven’t reached my ideal weight yet. Sigh! Just a mere .5 kilo and yet, it is so difficult to attain— especially now with the stay-at-home request from the Tokyo Governor.

Ever since I started working from home, I get to eat lunch and dinner with my kids everyday. “Why not breakfast?”, you might ask. Well, nobody in this house wakes up early! Sigh again!

Anyway, since I get to eat with the kids now, I get to finally chit chat with them (yup…no phones, no iPad and no TV while eating). But the chit chat ends when they finish eating. So like any other typical mom, I want them to stay longer at the dining table so I can chat with them longer . What is the best thing to do then? Bake them desserts that they definitely love!

One sunny quarantine day, I casually told them that since I wasn’t as busy as before, I could bake them something. They got excited and they started flipping through my recipe notebook. They didn’t like apple pie at that time, and cupcakes with frosting are just too much work for me. They then settled with lemon bars.

The first time I baked these lemon bars, they were an epic failure. They were too dry and the crust was too hard. I definitely thought I sucked at these dessert bars so I stopped baking them altogether. That was two years ago.

But on that day when my kids wanted me to bake lemon bars for them, these sweeties turned out to be really good! So from then on, we eat lemon bars with freshly brewed coffee (except for Zach) right after lunch. And from then on, I have been baking lemon bars every week!

So for my blog today, I will share with you my recipe for lemon bars. I got this recipe from my cousin who loves baking as much as I do. You can check her account on Instagram: The Bad Brownies.

I hope that through these lemon bars, you will also be able to encourage your kids to stay longer at the dinner table just to have those treasured chit chats with you…like what I did (and do).

Have fun baking!

Lemon Bars Recipe

For the Crust

• 2 cups All-Purpose Flour
• 2 sticks Butter, softened at room temperature
• ¾ cup Powdered Sugar

For the Filling:

• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp All-Purpose Flour
• ¾ tsp Baking Powder
• 2 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1 tsp Grated Lemon Peel
• Powdered Sugar to sprinkle on top of the bars

For the Crust:

1. Combine flour, butter, and powdered sugar. Mix until it resembles coarse crumbs. I use hand mixer for this process.
2. Pat into an 8 x 8 baking pan. Bake at 180°C for 21 minutes.

For the Filling:

1. Beat eggs.
2. Add sugar, flour, baking powder, lemon juice and lemon peel.
3. Beat until frothy.
4. Pour over the crust.
5. Bake for 21 minutes or until light golden brown. Do not over cook.
6. Cool on a wire rack.
7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.