Healthy and Delicious –
Honey Lemon Bars
One of our favorite readers, Verna, asked us to include a recipe for Healthy Honey Lemon Bars. We researched honey and baking and found some very interesting information that you can use as a guide for baking with honey. By using these techniques and tips, you can replace white sugar with honey. It’s fun to experiment with different flavored honeys and taste the results, too! Of course, it goes without saying that you can clean this recipe up even more, experimenting with gluten free flour substitutions, coconut sugar, and so on.
Cleansing Benefits of Lemon
When I was a kid and we stained or good lace blouses at Sunday School, my Mom would soak the blouse in a bowl of water with some fresh lemon juice in it. Lemon juice turned out to be a great stain remover without the harshness of bleach. So, I’m not surprised that lemon also is a good cleanser for your body. Here is a post from foodmatters.tv that explains 16 benefits to including lemon in your menus.
The Recipe
Ingredients
- Crust:
- 6 Tbsp whole wheat flour
- 6 Tbsp all purpose flour
- 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
- 3 Tbsp cornstarch
- 2 tsp grated lemon zest
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 4 Tbsp unsalted butter, chopped and placed in freezer to get cold
- 1 Tbsp Vanilla Greek yogurt
- Filling:
- ½ cup Bee Wild raw honey
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 egg white, beaten
- 2 Tbsp whole wheat flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp grated lemon zest
- 6 tbsp fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
- powdered sugar for dusting
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F
- Grease pan with a bit of organic butter so that the parchment paper will stick on the pan.
- Line a 8" x 8" square baking dish with two long pieces of parchment paper. Allow at least 2 inches of selvage so that you can use the selvage to pick the bars up out of the pan easily.
- Grease parchment paper with a bit of organic butter.
- Mix the first seven ingredients for the crust in your mixer, blender, or food processor.
- Add the butter and honey and mix until the mixture resembles crumbles.
- Pat mixture into the pan, smoothing the mixture into a crust.
- Bake until golden brown, 20-25 minutes.
- Cool the crust completely.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
- Whisk the first 6 filling ingredients together.
- Add lemon juice and mix.
- Pour filing mixture over the crust and bake for about 20 minutes or until the filling is set like a custard.
- Cool the bars in the pan so that they set firmly.
- Lift the entire mixture out of the pan and cut into squares.
- Sprinkle with powder sugar and enjoy!
