You only need 7 ingredients to make these lemon bars. The lemon curd filling is extra thick and creamy and sits on an irresistible butter shortbread crust. Always bake lemon bars at a lower temperature to avoid over-baking. They’re simply the best lemon bars and are perfect for picnics, bake sales, spring brunches, baby showers, and bridal showers.
Today I’m teaching you how to make lemon bars. I love this lemon dessert recipe so much that I published it in my 1st cookbook, Sally’s Baking Addiction. These are the best lemon bars and I don’t use that statement lightly. After 1 taste, I’m confident you’ll agree. Everyone needs this recipe.
The process is pretty simple and I’m walking you through each step in the video tutorial below. Pick up some fresh citrus and let’s get baking. Spring is in the air!
Video Tutorial: Lemon Bars
These are classic lemon bars featuring a soft butter shortbread crust and a tangy sweet lemon curd filling that’s baked to the perfect consistency. The lemon layer is thick and substantial, not thin or flimsy like most other lemon bar recipes.
Only 7 Ingredients in these Lemon Bars
- Butter: Melted butter is the base of the shortbread crust.
- Sugar: Sugar sweetens the crust and lemon curd filling layers. Not only this, it works with the eggs to set up the lemon filling. If reduced, the filling will be too wet.
- Flour: Flour is also used in both layers. Like sugar, it gives structure to the lemon filling. These days, I add slightly more flour to the shortbread crust compared to my cookbook version. You can get away with 2 cups, but an extra 2 Tablespoons really helps solidify the foundation of the lemon bars.
- Vanilla Extract: I use 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract in the shortbread crust. Not many lemon bar recipes call for vanilla extract and I promise you it’s my best kept secret.
- Salt: Without salt, the crust would be too sweet.
- Eggs: Eggs are most of the structure. Without them, you have lemon soup!
- Lemon Juice: I highly recommend using lemon juice squeezed from fresh lemons. You can also use another citrus like blood orange, grapefruit, or lime juice.
How to Make Lemon Bars in 5 Steps
- Prepare the crust: Mix all of the shortbread crust ingredients together, then press firmly into a 9×13 inch baking pan. Interested in a smaller batch? See my recipe note.
- Pre-bake: Pre-baking the crust guarantees it will hold up under the lemon layer.
- Prepare the filling: Whisk all of the filling ingredients together. No cooking on the stove!
- Bake: Pour the filling on the warm pre-baked crust, then bake for around 20 minutes or until the center is just about set. I slightly increased the baking temperature from my cookbook version. Either temperatures work, but 325°F is preferred.
- Cool: I usually cool the lemon bars for about 1 hour at room temperature, then stick the whole pan in the refrigerator for 1-2 more hours until relatively chilled. They’re wonderful cold and with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar on top!
Prepared in only 2 bowls and a baking pan, clean up is a breeze. These lemon bars win 1st place every time because they’re the perfect balance of tangy and sweet. In fact, I made them for my friend’s baby shower last weekend and they were the first dessert to disappear. And that’s saying a lot considering the competition: homemade chewy fudgy frosted brownies and adorable mini animal cracker cookies. 🙂
2 Guaranteed Tricks to Make the Best Lemon Bars
- Use a glass pan. Ceramic is fine, but glass is best. Do not use metal. I always detect a slight metallic flavor in the lemon bars when baked in metal pans.
- Use fresh juice. Store-bought bottles are convenient, but you miss out on a lot of flavor. You will definitely taste the difference! I have a super old citrus juicer, but I recently purchased this juicer for my mom and she loves it. Highly recommended.
White Air Bubbles on Top of Baked Lemon Bars
Do you notice air bubbles, perhaps even a white layer of air bubbles, on top of your baked lemon bars? That’s completely normal. It’s the air from the eggs rising to the surface. Some batches have it, some don’t. Regardless, the lemon bars taste the same and a dusting of confectioners’ sugar covers it right up!
Blood orange bars! See my recipe note about substituting flavors.
Want to kick it up a notch? Here are my lemon meringue pie and lemon cheesecake recipes.
Craving lots of texture with your bars? You’ll love my oatmeal lemon crumble bars.
Plenty of lemon recipes to love on my site including these lemon crinkle cookies and lemon thumbprint cookies! Regardless of what you choose, lemon-y desserts are always a great choice when looking for springtime or Easter dessert recipes.
PrintLemon Bars
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Total Time: 3 hours, 50 minutes
- Yield: 24 bars
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
You only need 7 ingredients to make these lemon bars. The lemon curd filling is extra thick and creamy and sits on an irresistible butter shortbread crust. Always bake lemon bars at a lower temperature to avoid over-baking. See recipe notes for important tips. They’re simply the best lemon bars and are perfect for picnics, bake sales, spring brunches, baby showers, and bridal showers.
Ingredients
Shortbread Crust
- 1 cup (16 Tbsp; 226g) unsalted butter, melted
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups + 2 Tablespoons (265g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
Lemon Filling
- 2 cups (400g) granulated sugar
- 6 Tablespoons (46g) all-purpose flour
- 6 large eggs
- 1 cup (240ml) lemon juice (about 4 lemons)
- optional: confectioners’ sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°F (163°C). Line the bottom and sides of a 9×13-inch glass baking pan (do not use metal) with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on the sides to lift the finished bars out (makes cutting easier!). Set aside.
- Make the crust: Mix the melted butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and salt together in a medium bowl. Add the flour and stir to completely combine. The dough will be thick. Press firmly into prepared pan, making sure the layer of crust is nice and even. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from the oven. Using a fork, poke holes all over the top of the warm crust (not all the way through the crust). A new step I swear by, this helps the filling stick and holds the crust in place. Set aside until step 4.
- Make the filling: Sift the sugar and flour together in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs, then the lemon juice until completely combined.
- Pour filling over warm crust. Bake the bars for 22-26 minutes or until the center is relatively set and no longer jiggles. (Give the pan a light tap with an oven mitt to test.) Remove bars from the oven and cool completely at room temperature. I usually cool them for about 2 hours at room temperature, then stick in the refrigerator for 1-2 more hours until pretty chilled. I recommend serving chilled.
- Once cool, lift the parchment paper out of the pan using the overhang on the sides. Dust with confectioners’ sugar and cut into squares before serving. For neat squares, wipe the knife clean between each cut. Cover and store leftover lemon bars in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.
- Freezing Instructions: Lemon bars can be frozen for up to 3-4 months. Cut the cooled bars (without confectioners’ sugar topping) into squares, then place onto a baking sheet. Freeze for 1 hour. Individually wrap each bar in aluminum foil or plastic wrap and place into a large bag or freezer container to freeze. Thaw in the refrigerator, then dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.
Notes
- Special Tools (affiliate links): 9×13-inch Glass Pan | Glass Mixing Bowls | Silicone Spatula | Silicone Whisk | Juicer | Fine Mesh Sieve
- Halve the Recipe: Halve each of the ingredients to yield around 12 squares in a 9-inch square baking pan. Same oven temperature. Bake the crust for 16-18 minutes and the bars for 20 minutes or until the center no longer jiggles.
- Sifting: More often than not, the flour doesn’t fully incorporate into the lemon filling unless it’s sifted with the sugar. As directed in the recipe, sift the two together before adding the eggs and lemon juice. I don’t always do this (and didn’t even do it in the video above!) but it’s preferred to avoid any flour lumps. If you have a sifter, it’s worth using. If you forget, it’s not a huge deal. Here is my favorite sifter. You use it again to dust the lemon bars with confectioners’ sugar.
- Lemon Juice: For exceptional taste, I highly recommend fresh lemon juice. Here is a wonderful inexpensive juicer if you don’t have one. Or use another fresh-squeezed citrus like grapefruit, blood orange, lime, or regular orange. You can slightly reduce the sugar if using a sweeter citrus. I recommend no less than 1 and 2/3 cup granulated sugar in the filling as it’s needed for structure.
- Room Temperature: Bringing the eggs and lemon juice to room temperature helps them mix easier into the flour and sugar. However, I never notice a taste or texture difference when using cold. Room temperature or cold, use whichever!
Excellent recipe! Appreciate the thorough description/video/recipe and Notes with tips. Made 2 batches in 2 weeks. Amazing results. Received so many compliments I had to pass along my own. Thank you!
I followed the recipe and used 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted (for the crust). In my opinion, someone mistakenly said there was a typo.
Excellent Lemon Bars! I tweaked the recipe. Thankfully, I noticed the remarks about the typo with the butter. I compared other recipes and chose to use the 1 stick of butter per 2 cups of flour. I also added 1/2 cup of almond flour to the crust and it was delicious. I used 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/4 of brown sugar in the crust. In the filling, I reduced to the sugar to 1 cup and the results were delicious. Thank you!
These are so good!! The recipe is so easy; it is nice not to have to separate eggs, and few ingredients are required. That lemon and buttery flavor is the best, and the vanilla shortbread brings full bliss.
I didn’t have the right size pan, so halved recipe and baked in 9″ round glass pie dish, worked great if you don’t mind some odd shaped slices!
I’m always looking for great recipes and I always end up at this site. Don’t know why I look anywhere else. I just served up the Lemon Bars with Shortbread Crust and it’s the best! Followed the recipe to a tee. Didn’t change a thing. Thank you! This recipe’s a keeper.
✌️
newly moved out of my moms place so i dont have a lot of pans, made it in a pasta pot and it still came out super good, just took a hot minute to cook
Wonderful! This will be my go to lemon bar recipe from now on. I did make them GF with Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1. I added zest to the curd as my family is citrus crazy. They turned out perfect and I can’t wait to make a mixed citrus curd for the next batch.
Great Recipe, came out awesome! I used a 9×9 so had to adjust baking times a tad but they are the perfect balanced squares!
I don’t get what people are talking about straining their curd because it’s not a cooked curd and doesn’t need it 😛 Also, to all the people complaining about it going wrong when they have made all these changes to the recipe can you please not blame the recipe rather than your knowledge of substitutions and baking science ;P
I loved this recipe so much that I made three pans of them in the course of seven days. All the people I shared them with loved them too!
I made with mostly Meyers Lemons, and it came out great. My shortbread was a bit difficult to make even in my parchment lined glass baking dish. Any pointers on getting the shortbread even?
Hi Kenny, thanks for giving this recipe a try. We’re so glad you enjoyed it! If you have a flat back or offset spatula, those work great for pressing the crust into an even layer. Or, gently using your hands works, too. Hope this helps for next time!
Perfect classic lemon bars.
They were perfectly sweet to my taste, so I didn’t dust them with powdered sugar.
Thank you for the notes- useful since I halved the recipe. Will try the blood orange modification next – so pretty!
Amazing! I love lemon bars and this is my new favorite recipe. I subbed brown sugar and followed the rest closely. I needed a lemon recipe to make use of the extra lemons from our tree, and these will become part of the rotation. Perfect balance of sweet and tart, and easy to pull off. My family loved them-a big hit!
We’re so glad you loved this recipe, Maria! Here are all our recipes using lemons if you need any more inspiration. Hope you find some to enjoy!
I’ve never made anything like this before but Dang are they tart! I really wish I would of left my crust in for longer. It is too soft for me also too tart. I’ll have to give them away but I never made a lemon bar before so it wasn’t a bad first experience
Tried this pretty much as written – I did add a little zest to the top – and it was delicious. I tried again with blood oranges and was not as satisfied – the color was not very appetizing, for one, sort of a reddish gray color. But more importantly, it really wasn’t tart at all…just very sugary with a little bit of orange taste. I like the idea of orange bars, though…maybe I will try half lemon and half orange sometime? Anyway – as *lemon* bars these are amazing 🙂
I made these exactly as directed and came out perfectly. another hit from Sally’s Baking Addiction!!
Amazing! We made these tonight and they were a huge hit. We didn’t even let them cool.
I don’t strain the egg mixture so that way I can use zest in the mix. I also actually used half light brown and half white sugar in the shortbread so the bars would be a little bit chewier. As for the filling, I added a tablespoon of vanilla as well as the zest… Sometimes as a rendition of these classics, I’ll add either cream cheese, sour cream, or sweetened condensed milk if I want a creamier lemon bar. However I love the tartness that these bars offer. Great tip to poke holes with a fork (not all the way through) the crust so the filling won’t separate from the crust (this always happens!). I also cook the crust at 325degrees and then only start to prepare the filling once out of the oven…raise the temperature of the oven to 350, prepare the filling and pour over the crust very SLOWLY otherwise the crust can get totally messed up! Then I cook the whole thing for 25 more mins.
So I’m really pleased and I make lemon bars more than any dessert in my home (or maybe chocolate chip cookies, but who’s keeping track)
Great recipe, easy instructions! I also have used a metal pan and haven’t had any issues.
I was in quite a rush when I made this and it came out beautifully even though I made significant changes to the instructions. I used a much smaller oval ceramic dish because I wanted it to be more like a pie. I lined with parchment and also pressed dough about 2 inches up the sides of the dish. I filled the cooked dough cup with the liquid while the crust was still piping hot and got it back in the oven. Both the dough and the filling took a little longer to cook because it was thicker. It set up perfectly with a very nice texture. I used fresh Meyer lemons and an extra teaspoon of vanilla and it was delicious! I served it with fresh raspberries
Oops!!! I modified using clarified butter, monk fruit sugar and Bob’s Redmill one to one gluten free flour.
The crust was not thick at all despite using exact grams of flour and even 30 g less of clarified butter.
I used about 2/3 cup less sugar in the filling.
I baked crust for 34 minutes and it started to bubble. Edges didn’t get quite lightly brown but I thought it had been over 12 minutes longer in oven than recipe called for. When I went to pour in filling, it erupted the crust and broke it into crumbles. So the filling is on the bottom and the crust is mixed in with the filling.
Not the most beautiful bar by far, but tastes great!
Next time I’ll use more flour in the crust. And possibly date purée.
Hi Sally!
Absolutely loved this recipe. I’ve only starting baking recently, but your recipes are so easy to follow, they give beautiful results and definitely boost my confidence
These bars aren’t going to survive very long – they’re already being gobbled up!
Brilliant. Easy Peasy, l just followed the recipe and added the zest of the lemons. My lemons were very ripe so after zesting them l halved them , flattened them out on a plate with its edge slightly tilted and pressed the juice out using the flat bottom of a cup. Very yummy dessert.
Not sure why there are so many negative reviews! This was a huge hit! I did have to bake my crust a little longer. Make sure it is lighter brown and feels crisp before you add the filling. I poured the filling right on top while the crust was still hot and I had no egginess and a perfectly creamy lemon topping. Give this recipe a chance! I will definitely make it again. It is devine!
This recipe was a home run. The crust holds up under the weight of the curd. The result was gorgeous and my husband loved them so much.
I added a little zest to the curd and next time I will reduce the oven temperature or check the bars earlier than the suggested time because I think I left them in just a tad long.
Seriously the best lemon bar regardless.
Great recipe! My oven burns a little hot so I cut the temperature to 275 degrees. It came out perfect! The instructions were very easy to follow and everyone loved them!
These lemon bars came out perfect! I only had jumbo eggs so used 5 which 1 had 2 small yolks. I used metal 9×13 pan lined with parchment paper but baked it for about 13-15 minutes more and crust turned out great. Only thing I added was about 1 tablespoon of lemon zest as I like my lemon curd tart. I’m no great baker but following this recipe instructions it was easy.
You need to make sure that the shortbread is well attached and pressed to the sides and there aren’t any cracks or anywhere where the lemon topping can pour underneath. This happened to me because the lemon filling is liquidy and fills underneath the shortbread and makes it spongey. Once I fixed that issue that stopped happening. Best method is having the lemon filling ready to go, and after the shortbread is cooked and still hot from the oven, pour the lemon filling on top so a layer cooks and keeps the rest from spilling underneath and creating the bad effect.
I halved the recipe and results came out great! My fam and friends enjoyed it.
This is my first attempt and it received an average score of 8/10 (surprisingly!).
I used a much smaller metallic pan (since the recipe is halved) and baked for about 30 minutes for the crust to be lightly brown. I used parchment paper and didn’t notice any metallic taste.
Substituted 10g of lemon juice with Roku Gin. This gave it some herby and a more complex flavour. Reduced 30g of sugar in my curd. And baked it for 35-40 minutes to get it to the perfect texture.
Not sure why the timing is a bit off but it came out nice 🙂 I believe this recipe is rather fail-proof. Tbh I was just winging it with the sugar, technique (I don’t have any) and bake time. Would definitely bake this again!!!
Absolutely delicious! I prepared them exactly as your recipe was written. Yum! Yum!
Hi Sally. Second time making these squares. Great flavour all round, but the cooked lemon custard remains thin. I did halve the recipe, using 8×8 pan. When you’re mixing the custard, are you whipping the eggs to create volume?
I’ve made this recipe twice and the results were fantastic!!
Reading the reviews for whom it did NOT work, made me wonder if the directions are not clear enough, or …?
Here are some little tweaks I did:
I used 2 sticks of butter whipped with sugar until light and fluffy. Did not melt the butter. I think it makes the crust lighter and more melt-in-your-mouth worthy.
For the filling, I whipped the eggs alone in a stand up mixer until they were light pale yellow and frothy. Then I SLOWLY added the lemon juice, beating at high speed. Once that was done, I spooned the sugar/flour mixture in 1 TBS. at a time, continuing. to mix at high speed. The entire mix becomes pale yellow and frothy.
I baked the shortbread at 350’ for about 30 minutes before the edges browned. Then reduced the heat, pricked the shortbread, and poured on the filling. Baked 26 minutes at 325’.
Came out PERFECTLY!!
Try again, fellow bakers!! It really IS a great recipe!!
So fun and delicious!! Might become my new weakness ♥️
Absolutely love this recipe ,Worked out perfect the first try .