Mennonite Monday - Lemon Bars

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

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I did not get the Mennonite Monday poll posted last week, so I had to decide what I would make this week. On Tuesday night I was at the Preschool Committee meeting at our church, when we started talking about the possibility of creating a cookbook as a fundraiser for the preschool. We know that both of the church cookbooks are out of print, so we are interested in creating a new cookbook with recipes from the white and yellow church cookbook, plus some new recipes of our own.
Please leave a comment if you think a new cookbook would be a good idea and/or you would be interested in purchasing one. I'm curious to see if there is interest in this project.

Okay, so back to the recipe. As we were talking about the white and yellow cookbooks, we decided that it was kind of like this secret code that we talk in and is hard to understand unless you own the cookbooks. In this conversation, Arlyce Erb's Lemon Bars came up, so I searched through my cookbooks and found the recipe on page 21 of the yellow cookbook.

Let me tell you, this recipe is AMAZING. They are also incredibly easy for being made from scratch. I have tried to make a few recipes of lemon bars since we have been married. One from a box and at least one I found on the internet. I will never need to find another recipe for lemon bars again.

Lemon Bars
1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup oleo
1/2 cup powdered sugar
4 eggs beaten
2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons flour
6 tablespoons lemon juice

Mix flour, oleo and powdered sugar. Put in 9 x13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Then mix together eggs, sugar, flour and lemon juice. Pour over hot baked crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Cool and cut. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

The mixture is pretty crumbly after it is all mixed up.

I did not press down the the crust in the bottom of the pan, but others I have talked to always press down the crust in the pan, so it is up to you.

I mixed the bar ingredients together while the crust was baking in the oven.

As soon as the crust came out of the oven, I poured the lemon mix on top.

In the oven.

After it was done baking.

With the powdered sugar on top.

The final project. YUM! I couldn't leave these alone. I even started eating them while they were still warm.