Lemon Squares, French Style : TWD

It's Tuesdays With Dorie (TWD) week. We have two selected recipes to bake from each month and for this month, we were given the choice to select which recipe to bake first. I've made Fluted Carrot-Tangerine Cake two weeks ago, and for this week, it is Lemon Squares, French Style. I love lemon bars, one of my favourite baked lemony treats. Dorie's French style lemon squares comes in three layers. The bottom layer is a buttery shortbread dough, using the same dough, some is reserved as a streusel topping, with some chopped almonds sprinkled over. Sandwiched in between these two layers is the delicious lemony curd. 

I made the lemon curd the day before and bake the lemon squares on the next day. Made half the recipe and some changes to the amount of butter and sugar. There's quite an amount of butter for the curd itself! For half a recipe, it calls for 1 stick plus 1 tablespoon butter, which is about 130gm. I used only 60gm and it works out just fine for me. As for the sugar, I've used a scant 1/2 cup of sugar, with slightly less than 1/3 cup of lemon juice. The lemon curd cooks up pretty quick and it is lemony, silky, and very, very yummy! Love it!

Lemon curd, so silky smooth and very addictive!

The shortbread dough is easy to make. But the amount of sugar in the recipe is a little too much for me. I like salty buttery crust, instead of sweet crust. Since the lemon curd is lemony sweet, I've reduced the amount of sugar for the dough to 50gm (original amount for half a recipe is 125gm). Some of you may be wondering about the texture of the dough with the amount of sugar I've reduced, but it works for me, and I have always reduced the sugar for Dorie's sweet pastry dough recipe each time I make it. And the dough has always turns out buttery, tender and flaky without being overly sweet.

For half a recipe, I've baked the lemon squares in a 7" square baking pan.

Some chopped almonds is sprinkled over the streusel topping and bake until the edges are caramelized and the curd is puffy, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely in pan over a rack. Dorie says to allow at least 2 hours and up to 6 hours before cutting. I've left mine to cool overnight and cut it the next morning.

These bars are really yummy with the perfect amount of sweetness. The dough is buttery, salty, flaky just as I like. The struesel topping with the bits of almonds is a different take on the usual lemon bars that I've made before. Much as I like these bars with the streusel topping, my personal preference is still the old-fashioned way with just the shortbread base and the lemon curd without any topping, with just a sprinkling of powdered sugar over the squares. But that being said, these bars are really yummy, I would say no if served a piece of these!

A yummy lemony treat, good to snack on anytime.

I'm linking this post with Tuesdays With Dorie (TWD)