Can Someone Explain this Recipe to me?!

[quantumleap]

I LOVE lemon bars, so when this recipe showed up in my inbox from Mothering, I was stoked. However, tonight when I sat down to look it over thinking I'd make it, it makes only partial sense to me.
http://www.mothering.com/recipes/tru...ony-lemon-bars

What is "gas temp"? ("Combine eggs, sugar Bake on gas temp 5 for 15 minutes.")
Which sugar goes where? Powdered sugar in the crust, regular sugar in with the eggs? If I'm heating sugar and eggs in a saucepan (my best guess at that part of the instructions), what am I doing again with the same two eggs and sugar? Is that just a typo, and you're supposed to add the other ingredients once you've heated/thickened the eggs and sugar?

I'm actually really good at adapting and understanding recipes, and most of my recipe cards only have a list of ingredients - no instructions at all - but baking sort of scares me! I know it's a lot easier to mess up and a lot harder to tweak after the fact than something like stew or a casserole! Help?!

Thanks.

[earthmama369]

Gas stoves are often marked with 1-5 (or whatever) for temperature, instead of low to high like electric stoves. I wonder if someone took the recipe from a UK/European site and "translated" it to the standard US style, but missed that line? It really doesn't make sense to have that there.

The powdered sugar gets sprinkled on the lemon bars after they come out and have cooled down. That's in the last line of the directions. The rest? Yeah. Really, really mistranslated. It almost looks as if someone cut and pasted part of the recipe twice, translating one set into standard US format. That doesn't make any sense as written.

[Annie Mac]

That's pretty bad. I don't think this recipe is useable as it is printed. I mean, how much flour goes into the crust, and how much goes into the filling? And really? Flour in the filling? I know you need something to thicken it with, but it has eggs already.

At least it doesn't have my number one pet peeve in recipes: "add one stick of butter" One stick? And how much is that, exactly?

[Pumpkin_Pie]

Originally Posted by Annie Mac

That's pretty bad. I don't think this recipe is useable as it is printed. I mean, how much flour goes into the crust, and how much goes into the filling? And really? Flour in the filling? I know you need something to thicken it with, but it has eggs already.

At least it doesn't have my number one pet peeve in recipes: "add one stick of butter" One stick? And how much is that, exactly?

1 stick = 8 tablespoons

[Otto]

Originally Posted by earthmama369

Gas stoves are often marked with 1-5 (or whatever) for temperature, instead of low to high like electric stoves.

Regulo 5 is an oven temperature of 375 Fahrenheit, FWIW. It runs from 0 to 9 with a couple of fractional settings, at least according to Recipes into Type.

[quantumleap]

Originally Posted by Otto

Regulo 5 is an oven temperature of 375 Fahrenheit, FWIW. It runs from 0 to 9 with a couple of fractional settings, at least according to Recipes into Type.

That's even odder, as it's in reference to only eggs and sugar. I don't think you'd be parking that in the oven at 375. Holy. Well, at least the recipe is amusing, I guess!

[cristeen]

It should read:
Cream butter and powdered sugar.
Add 1 c flour.
Press into bottom and sides of 9x9 inch pan.
Bake at 350° F for 15 minutes.

Mix 2 eggs, 1 cup of white or raw cane sugar, salt, lemon juice, baking powder, and 2 T flour.
Pour over hot crust, and bake for 30 minutes.
Cool and sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar.

[quantumleap]

Originally Posted by cristeen

It should read:
Cream butter and powdered sugar.
Add 1 c flour.
Press into bottom and sides of 9x9 inch pan.
Bake at 350° F for 15 minutes.

Mix 2 eggs, 1 cup of white or raw cane sugar, salt, lemon juice, baking powder, and 2 T flour.
Pour over hot crust, and bake for 30 minutes.
Cool and sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar.

Aaah. Plain english! Thanks Cristeen!
Oddly, the recipe comes from "Parismama", which would lead me to think that maybe it was originally in french. French is my first language, but that helped me not a lick in deciphering this recipe!

[Otto]

Originally Posted by cristeen

It should read:
Cream butter and powdered sugar.
Add 1 c flour.
Press into bottom and sides of 9x9 inch pan.
Bake at 350° F for 15 minutes.

I strongly suspect that the salt goes in the crust rather than the filling.

[ETA.--Or not. I guess that is the Joy of Cooking ratio.]

[JessicaS]

Originally Posted by cristeen

It should read:
Cream butter and powdered sugar.
Add 1 c flour.
Press into bottom and sides of 9x9 inch pan.
Bake at 350° F for 15 minutes.

Mix 2 eggs, 1 cup of white or raw cane sugar, salt, lemon juice, baking powder, and 2 T flour.
Pour over hot crust, and bake for 30 minutes.
Cool and sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar.

I think the powdered sugar should only go on top.

The recipe I use calls for granulated sugar in both the crust and the filling. This is in the williams-sonoma "sweet treats" cook book which is actually my daughters It is really good though. Obviously they did not write their directions like this.


Crust

1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick or 8 tablespoons whatever ) butter

cream it, smoosh it into a square pan lined with parchment, cook for 15-20 minutes

Filling

1 tsp lemon zest
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 large eggs
1cup granulated sugar
2tbsp flour
1/2 baking powder

Mix all that together really well with mixer or just beat the snot out of it, dump on crust, throw back in oven

Bake 25-30 minutes let them cool off then sprinkle powdered sugar

[cristeen]

Originally Posted by abimommy

I think the powdered sugar should only go on top.

The recipe I use calls for granulated sugar in both the crust and the filling.

What you do, because a lot of recipes are written this way, is read the ingredient list from the top down. So they say butter, sugar, flour - those are the first three things listed... butter, powdered sugar, 1 c flour.

If you notice, the description takes the rest of the ingredients in precisely the order they're listed above. No deviation.

And I do have a cookie recipe with a crust that has powdered sugar in it, so that doesn't seem weird to me at all. But using a full 1/4 c of powdered sugar to sprinkle would be a bit of overkill, I think.

[JessicaS]

You may be right I have never used powdered sugar in a recipe like that but I see lots of recipes that do

[Annie Mac]

Originally Posted by Pumpkin_Pie

1 stick = 8 tablespoons

Hey, thanks!