Not Always from Scratch {Luscious Lemon Bars}

In our family, most all desserts are home-made. Almost exclusively, when I look back on photos from when I was a kid that have us gathered around a cake, blowing out candles or such, it is my mother's amazing cinnamon-chocolate cake taking center stage. Chocolate chip cookies? Home-baked. Sugar-cookies? No refrigerated dough for us - home-baked. Grandma Mary's Pecan Tarts and other treats...all. home-made. In addition to a penchant for making things our own selves, we also have quite a quirky humor. So, the running joke goes, "Did you make this yourself?" "Why, yes, I made it from scratch. I scratched the whole time I made it."  ba-dum-bump. 

During the 70's, my mother tried her hand at "pride-food", thinking a box mix cake, or what have you, would be a lifesaver and what she found out is that she might just be the only person on the planet that can't bake things from a mix. The cakes would always turn out wonky - flat in some places, raised in others...just off. So, she gave up on that and went back to baking from scratch. 

That being said, our family does have a few great, standard dessert offerings that use a box mix cake as the beginnings of something else entirely. These lemon bars are just one such item.  When I realized, Thursday afternoon, that I'd signed up to bring a sweet treat to my son's school for Teacher Appreciation Week, *and* I had just returned from the store, I crossed my fingers and hoped that my well-stocked pantry and fridge didn't fail me. Lemon cake mix? Check. Eggs? Check. Cream Cheese? welllll, not a block of standard cream cheese, but I did have an 8 oz. tub of whipped cream cheese. It would have to do. I also was lacking a bit of the confectioners' sugar that the recipe called for, but by subbing in some granulated sugar, we were in business. 

Luscious Lemon Bars

(adapted from Barbara Dill)

• 1 box lemon cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 C butter (softened)
• 1 8 oz tub whipped cream cheese
• 1 box (16 oz.) powdered sugar (note: I'm not even sure they sell it in boxes anymore; I had about 12 oz (weighed) of powdered sugar and made up the balance with white granulated sugar)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. In a large bowl, mix cake mix, 1 egg and softened butter. I used a pastry blender (see here) until pea sized crumbs form. Press mixture into the bottom of a 9X13 cake pan.
3. In a large bowl (you can use the same one as for the crust), mix together the cream cheese, sugar(s) and 2 slightly beaten eggs. Mix until well blended and then pour over the pressed cake mixture.
4. Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes; lower heat to 300 and bake for an additional 30 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack. Once completely cool, cut into squares and serve. Store in fridge.

This is a super easy dessert to make. The fact that it is a bar dessert makes it uber easy to transport for potlucks and the like. I've not tried other cake mix flavors, but I'm pretty sure there are some good alternate choices with Strawberry and Pineapple immediately coming to mind. (Of course, we'll have to come up with some good alliterative names to go along with them.)  If you don't tell anyone that you used a box mix, I won't either! 

Happy Cooking!

sld

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