Welcome to Bon Appétit Bake Club, a community of curious bakers. Each month senior Test Kitchen editors Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic share a must-make recipe and dive deep on why it works. Come bake and learn with us—and don’t forget to join the Bake Club Group chat over on Substack.
A whole lemon—pith, skin, flesh, and all—is a powerful thing. When used correctly, that power can be harnessed for good, heightening the citrus fruit’s bright, piercing notes to soaring new heights. Here, classic lemon bars call upon the brute strength of two whole lemons to embolden the custard with a Lemonhead-like flavor. The lemons are chopped up and blended into pulpy submission along with added juice. (Organic lemons are ideal here, but a good scrubbing of conventional ones will also work.) Blending extracts all of the precious oils from the peels, imbuing the juice with another dimension of lemon flavor. It’s sweet, sour, a touch bitter, and delightfully puckery.
Straining the mixture ensures that the custard layer is free of any lumps that might get in the way of its silky texture; pairing that juice with a can of sweetened condensed milk balances not only the bite, but adds a delightful creaminess akin to a Key lime pie. (Extra credit if you turn those leftover egg whites into a meringue topping.) An added bonus? The whole thing (including the shortbread) can be whipped up by hand without the need for a mixer.
Read More: Drop What You’re Doing and Make Bake Club’s Lemon Bars
