Lemon-Meringue-Bars

Hej!

Spring seems to arrive here finally, the sky is blue, the buds are just showing and it’s getting warmer so I wanted to make a cake which tastes like spring today: fresh, juicy and sweet! It ended up being a sheet cake similar to lemon bars, with a meringue topping and I also added little mandarin butterflies.

Here is the recipe for these gorgeous spring bars 🙂

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Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 300 g smooth butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 150 g sugar
• 400 g flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt

For the lemon filling:

• 6 eggs
• 300 g sugar
• 60 g starch
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 organic lemons (peel and juice)

For the meringue:

• 4 egg whites
• 130g sugar
• 1 sachet vanilla sugar

For the decoration:

• 2 cans of mandarins (actually you just need one but as some don’t look as nice as I want them to look I took 2 to have a better choice)

Beat the soft butter together with the sugar. Add egg yolks (you can save 2 egg whites here for later). Mix the dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder and salt) a
nd mix under the butter mass until you get a smooth dough (similar to cookie dough) which you form to a ball and wrap in cling film and cool in the fridge for 1h.

Roll the dough quite thin (use some flour) and put it on a baking sheet which is covered with baking paper and press it into the baking sheet with your hands. Form a little edge.

Bake in the preheated oven in 160°C for 15 minutes.  Take it out of the oven.

Before you squeeze the lemons, rasp the outside to get the lemon peel.

Beat the eggs together with the sugar until foamy. Add starch, salt, lemon peel and lemon juice and pour it onto the dough (it will be really liquid).

Bake for another 25 minutes, same temperature and take it out of the oven.

For the meringue, beat 4 egg whites (add a little of the sugar in the beginning) and gradually add the sugar (mix sugar and vanilla sugar before) until you get a sticky foamy mass. Spread the meringue on the cake and bake in 170°C for another 10-15 minutes until the meringue starts to get slightly brown. Take the cake out of the oven.

Cut the cake in suares and add the mandarin halfs in a butterfly shape to each piece. Enjoy ♥

Jpeg