SMS: Toasted Almond Lemon Bars

This week's recipe for the Sweet Melissa Bakers was Toasted Almond Lemon Bars which was picked by Rebecca of Indecisive Baker.

Go check out her blog. Yes, now. The recipe is that good. It's my new go to shortbread/lemon bar recipe.

That's not to say that I didn't make some minor tweaks that ended up getting their revenge later. I decided to go with a round pie pan because I thought it would make the bars look striking for when I bought them into work. Problem was that I did not factor in the difference in size so I had more dough than I should have which made the rest of the assembly more complicated...the baking times were off and the filling just never set properly after that.

Fortunately, in my new attempt to embrace moderation with eating, I threw some dough into a few mini tart pans to save for me while I bought the pie to work. While the pie just never came together  the tarts obediently baked and firmed up perfectly. I did skip the prebaking on these and just patted the dough into place, poured the filling on top and baked it along with the poor doomed should have worked out and not sure why it didn't pie pan. The mini tarts turned out wonderfully..crust was lightly golden and the filling was perfect.

I'm thinking that this may be have a blessing in disguise as I could see myself picking at the pie all weekend and finishing off way too much of it had that turned out as it was supposed to have. I would definitely make this again..but I would want to chill the dough before putting it into the pan as it came out a bit sticky for me. But I would use the smaller tart pans again instead of a traditional bar...they worked out perfectly as a single serving and came out of the tart pans fairly easily even though I didn't spray the pans before hand.