These raspberry crumb bars got inhaled here at home and will be making a repeat appearance, but those citrus bars? Never again! It's not that they weren't good, because what lemon bar isn't good? Especially one with the addition of lime? But where the raspberry crumb bars were relatively simple and fun, the citrus bars demanded more elbow grease and then ran into technical issues.
The raspberry crumb bars involved making an almond-y dough that would serve as both the base and topping. The base gets baked briefly in a cookie sheet lined with parchment, then cooled and spread with jam. Then the remaining dough is scattered on as a topping and baked. When cool, a bench scraper works well as a cutter. They were bagged with the citrus bars as thank-you gifts to volunteers at an event I organized and excitedly received.
The citrus bars? This one photo speaks to my stress with this recipe. There were lots of lemons and limes to juice, and the limes took more work. And then I used a rimmed cookie sheet as directed for the base, but the dough came up to the rim, leaving no room for the pourable fillling! So I moved and pressed the partially baked dough into this 9x13 pan and the rest into an 8x8 square pan, and poured the filling on top. It worked, but some dough pieces floated to the top and it wasn't attractive. But confectioners sugar covers up all sorts of ugly, so I was still able to gift them.
Now I did make this once before, halving the recipe and baking it in this 9x13 pan and it worked out just fine, if you want to try it. But I'd had enough with this try, plus it's a heart attack special with the 8 eggs, pound of butter, and 4 cups of sugar (which I cut down to 3 cups without a problem). But I really recommend those raspberry crumb bars!
