Easy Lemon Bar Recipe (With Video Tutorial)
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This easy lemon bar recipe includes the perfect blend of zesty lemon flavor and irresistible sweetness with a shortbread crust that has an exquisitely light crunch.
I’m so very excited about this easy lemon bar recipe post and video tutorial! I hope you’ll watch it and comment below. It includes two very special guests: Terri, the reader who gave me the Dixie cornbread recipe, and another surprise guest (watch to find out).
But back to these luscious lemon bars! When I say this is an easy lemon bar recipe, you know I mean it! We first have to combine the butter, flour, and sugar to make the base, which we pre-bake. While that’s baking, we stir together the remaining lemon filling ingredients and pour them over the top, and bake once more. Then all you have to do is patiently wait for them to cool before sprinkling them with confectioner’s sugar.
These lemon bars are perfectly sweet but with a deliciously tangy and tart lemon flavor. Because we pre-bake the shortbread base, it has an exquisitely light crunch to it that I cannot get enough of! The combination of this with the soft and smooth lemon curd filling that just melts in your mouth is irresistible, let me tell you!
I hope you enjoyed watching this tutorial on how to make lemon bars as much as we did making it.
Recipe Ingredients
- All-purpose flour
- Butter
- Confectioner’s sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Eggs
- Lemon juice
- Baking powder
How to Make Easy Lemon Bars
Making the Shortbread Crust
First, we’re going to make the base. Sift together flour and confectioner’s sugar.
Cut in butter until the mixture clings together.
Press base into a baking dish.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until lightly brown.
Making the Lemon Filling
Combine and beat together the eggs, granulated sugar, and lemon juice.
Sift flour and baking powder.
Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Pour this over the baked lemon bar crust.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until slightly brown and set.
Remove from the oven.
Cool and then sprinkle in the confectioner’s sugar.
Cut into bars and try not to eat all of these lovely before offering them to family and friends!
I sure do hope you enjoy 😀.
Storage
- These lemon bars are a great make-ahead dessert, as you can store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 6 days.
- You can also freeze the un-dusted bars for up to 4 months. Thaw them in the fridge and then dust with confectioner’s sugar before serving.
Recipe Notes
- You can use either bottled lemon juice or fresh lemon juice.
- If using lemons to make fresh lemon juice, you can also add the lemon zest for added lemon flavor.
- To add more flavor to the base, go ahead and add a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
- For easier removal, line your baking dish with parchment paper. Then you can use the leftover parchment paper hanging over the sides as handles to easily lift the lemon bars out of the pan.
- Refrigerate the bars before cutting them to make it easier to cut them into clean squares.
You may also like these bar recipes:
Three Layer Chocolate Fantasy Bars
Gooey Butter Bars From Scratch
Or if you are hankering for more lemon recipes:
Ingredients
Base
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
Filling
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 4 tbsp confectioner's sugar
- 1/3 cup lemon juice
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Instructions
Base
- Sift together flour and confectioner's sugar. Cut in butter until the mixture clings together. Press into a 9x13-inch baking dish. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until lightly brown.2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
Filling
- Combine and beat together the eggs, granulated sugar, and lemon juice. Sift flour and baking powder and stir the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Pour the batter over the baked crust.4 eggs, 2 cups granulated sugar, 1/3 cup lemon juice, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder
- Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until slightly brown and set. Remove from the oven. Cool and then sprinkle with confectioner's sugar before cutting into bars.4 tbsp confectioner's sugar
Nutrition
Loved the video, and those lemon bars look scrumptious! By the way, that Georgia family reuinion you mentioned, is it the one next weekend (Souher-Dyer)? If so, we’ll be there since my mom and your mother-in-law are cousins. (We are technically Southers or Dyers, but we have a lot of the same ancesors and are relatives.)
Anyway, I am looking forward to making those delicious lemon bars. Yummy 🙂
Hi, Christy,
Happy one year Anniversary! This is a great website.
I’m fairly new here but am really enjoying it and have recommended it to many of my Red Hat Society sisters!
Most of your recipes and the expressions you use are very familiar to me as my family on both sides came to Texas from Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.
Love your accent, by the way! Mine is sorta like yours but with a Texas drawl!
Y’all have a wonderful day, hear?
Hugs,
Sandy in Texas
Happy Anniversary Christy 🙂 The video is a great success! My family thanks you for all of your wonderful recipes! My husband has asked me more than once if we can move to Alabama and become your neighbor in the hopes that you would feed him 🙂
You are a natural at what you do…don’t ever change that!
Thanks again for the recipes, the tangents(which are my favorites), and for bringing us Southern Plate!
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! I’m so happy I discovered your site. I live in Oregon but was born in Arkansas so I’m a long way from the South and I can’t tell you how excited I was to find your site the first time and all these fabulous recipes from my childhood. I sent the link to your site to everyone in my family. I look so forward to your newsletters – not only for the recipes but also for the clever way you write them – always so funny!
I just started a batch of these lemon bars and will be enjoying them for desert this evening after dinner – if they last that long. 🙂
Vickie
Great video! Lemon Bars are one of my favorites, and I didn’t have a recipe for them, so yay!! Happy anniversary my dear, and keep up the amazing work! You have a long line of fans who are so proud of you!!
Smooches!
-Lindsay and the Wonder Twins
Hey Lindsay!!! I always love seeing that pic of you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but every time I see a comment from you here or on facebook, I think “There is my glamorous reader!” because you look so much the screen siren in that photo!!
I really appreciate all of your comments, thank you!!!
Gratefully,
Christy
Ok girl, your first video, was a success. Good job. And what better
recipe to use than those delicious Lemon Bars. When Terri went to take her bite, I think I bit along with her.
Hope you will have many more of these little video’s, helps us to see exactly what how to do things.
Have a great day!
Trixie……you have NO idea how delicious that first bite was…….I had to be “cool” on camera, like the lady my mama taught me to be. It was hard being me that day ~grins~ having to sing, eat, nod and smile. whew. I gotta go sit down now.
Thank you so much, Trixie!! I sure did love having Terri here.
Love the video.. just came inside from working out in the yard and its gonna be 100 in Sapulpa Ok today… and so as an old person we are supposed to stay inside… I had to pick some blackberries and mow this morning… so now I have had my bath,,, from being outside and watched the video and just love it…. and think I might make these lemon bars (is this recipe in the cook book I have,, I must look before printing off)save a tree….. but I will wait til tonight as I don’t want to heat up the house right now.. haha the dogs and I are going to watch tv for a while in the cool living room and maybe read or crochet…well the dogs wont’ read or crochet maybe, hahahaha… so “shut yo mouth” yes lord a mercy them lemon bars look good and the video is just wonderful to hear you talk and watch you cook girl…
Love like ya was mine..
jo in Oklahoma…
Hey Jo!
I cannot tell you how warm your comment made me feel. I feel like I was out there with you picking blackberries and watching you cut the grass (I’ll move the limbs out of the way for ya). You are so good to me. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to meet you, too, someday! Sure would be a welcome treat!
Love you, too!
Gratefully,
Christy
P.S. Its so nice to feel loved!