Classic Lemon Bars Recipe

The best lemon bars are a classic spring recipe made with a buttery crust and gooey lemon filling. Top this lemon bar recipe with powdered sugar and you’ll have an easy and delicious spring dessert!

When April and May hit is just means lemon desserts like iced lemon cake, lemon meringue pie, lemon cheesecake cookies and these lemon bars! There’s nothing better than a sweet and tart lemon recipe to finish of a party or dinner as we head into the summer months.

Lemon bars are one of those classic recipes that you probably think of when you think lemon treats. For good reason! They’re delicious.

The trick to a good lemon bar? Lots of fresh lemon juice and lemon zest.

You’ll also want a soft and buttery crust for your lemon bar recipe. All that gooey filling has to top something!

Ingredients for the Best Lemon Bars

You will need a few basic baking ingredients to make these bars along with a few fresh lemons. Here is what you will need to make this delicious recipe:

Crust:

• Sugar: just regular granulated white sugar
• Unsalted Butter: needs to be softened to room temperature
• Flour: all purpose flour is all you need
• Salt: cuts through the sweetness and tartness and enhances all the flavors
• Lemon Juice: the juice of about 1 lemon

Filling:

• Eggs: creates the richness and creaminess of the filling
• Sugar: adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemons
• Flour: helps thicken the filling and gives it structure
• Salt: enhances all the flavors
• Lemon Juice: fresh lemon juice is preferred and you’ll need 3-4 large lemons
• Lemon Zest: you’ll need the zest from about 1 lemon
• Powdered Sugar: used for garnish to balance out the tartness and to make the bars look extra pretty

The measurements for each ingredient can be found in the recipe card at the end of this post. BONUS: If you want a gluten free lemon bar, check out our gf lemon bar recipe.

How to Make Lemon Bars

There are two parts to this recipe – the crust and the filling. Both parts are super simple! Here are the steps:

Crust:

Start by creaming 2 sticks of softened butter and sugar in a large bowl with a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. This will be the base of your really tender crust. Then you’ll add the flour and sugar to bring it all together to form a dough.

The dough will likely be a little crumbly at this point so add in a bit of lemon juice unti

Nutella Stuffed Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes

If an 8 year old can make Nutella Stuffed Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes, you certainly can do it! Moist chocolate cupcakes are a must for Valentine’s Day!

Are you familiar with how cooking happens in our house? It’s not just a mom thing, and it’s certainly not just an adult thing, the whole family is involved. I’ll tell you all about how our family created the tradition of kids cooking, plus a few tips for making it work in your home, but first, let’s chat about these Nutella Stuffed Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes, very similar to our Milk Chocolate Cupcakes.

Nutella Stuffed Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes

I love the look of chocolate and fluffy, pink anything, yes, even pink pancakes. I’m not really a pink girl, I think I have one or two pink shirts in my closet and that’s probably it. Now don’t panic, I have nothing against pink, I’m just not drawn to it like I am blue or white for example. I should move to Santorini, Greece. That seems like a good choice.

Ahhh but chocolate and pink, there’s something about that just makes me want to take a big ol’ bite. And these Nutella Stuffed Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes are the perfect example.

A moist chocolate cupcake, stuffed with totally lickable Nutella and topped off with strawberry buttercream that is silky like those old school 90’s silk pajamas. Nothing short of a dream.

Why Coffee in Chocolate Cake

You all know us well enough by now to know that we don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea and while yes, alcohol usually cooks out of things, we don’t keep it in the house so it just doesn’t happen.

When it comes to chocolate cake I’ve had to embrace that it does in fact make a difference. I bought this, Espresso Powder  used for baking and I merely add a little to any liquid in chocolate baking and it enhances the chocolate flavor without adding any coffee flavor. I honestly still skip it all the time, but really, it does make a difference and you’re probably eating it most of the time you buy a chocolate anything out and about.

Boiling Water in Chocolate Cake

Have you noticed how many chocolate recipes include boiling water? Especially a chocolate cake or cupcake. So what’s the deal with boiling water in chocolate cake?

It seems like it would be something with the hot water making the cake more moist or tender, but it’s actually about the cocoa. When making anything chocolate you should mix cocoa with hot water then let it sit for a few minutes. What you’re actually doing is blooming the chocolate, or in other words, the cocoa dissolves and the flavor particles are released leading to a more powerful chocolate flavor.

Chocolate brownies are a little different, you’ll want to bloom the chocolate in hot oil. Not like, fry you up some fried chicken oil, just warmed up so

Cranberry Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

This cranberry orange cake with cream cheese frosting is bursting with holiday flavors. Perfectly moist with the softest cake crumb – the combination of sweet oranges and tart cranberries makes it perfect for Christmas.

It’s not even Christmas until you’ve had some sort of orange cranberry baked good. Am I right? The flavors and scent of those two fruits together just sings! Have you tried our orange cranberry bliss bars?? Or our cranberry orange bubble bread (perfect for Christmas morning!)?? Now you can try this orange cranberry cake too!

Oh hi there! My name’s Fiona and I’m so excited to meet you! I blog over at Just So Tasty, and today’s my first guest post on Oh Sweet Basil.

I love baking, eating cake, and listening to country music. (Is that embarrassing? The country music part I mean???) And making tasty treats for the people I love is one of my absolute favorite things.

I was so excited when Carrian asked me to share recipes on Oh Sweet Basil, so today I’m starting off with this easy Cranberry Orange Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. It’s a perfectly moist vanilla sheet cake infused with fresh oranges and dotted with tart cranberries. Then it’s frosted with tangy cream cheese icing and decorated with sugared cranberries and orange zest.

What Do I Need to Make Cranberry Orange Cake?

Here is just a quick list of the ingredients so you can get an overview of what you will need. All the measurements and details can be found in the recipe card down below.

Sugared Cranberries

• Granulated Sugar
• Water
• Fresh Cranberries

Cranberry Orange Cake

• Dry Ingredients: Cake Flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and Salt
• Wet Ingredients: Unsalted Butter, Granulated Sugar, Egg Whites, Vanilla Extract, Milk, Sour Cream
• Cranberries tossed in Flour to keep them from sinking in the cake
• Orange Zest and Juice (fresh)

Cream Cheese Frosting

• Unsalted Butter
• Cream Cheese
• Powdered Sugar
• Whipping Cream or Milk
• Orange Zest

How to Make Cranberry Orange Cake

There are three different parts to this recipe – the sugared cranberries (used for aesthetic reason and are optional), the cake and the frosting. Here are the basic steps for making this cake:

Sugared Cranberries

1. Dissolve some of the sugar into the water in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat to create a simple syrup.
2. Stir in the fresh cranberries until they are well coated and then remove the berries with a slotted s

Easy Apple Dumplings with Sprite

Who knew that crescent rolls, cinnamon sugar apples, brown sugar, butter and sprite could make the best easy apple dumplings with Sprite ever!

Ditch your old apple dumplings recipe. Do it. Ditch it. These easy apple dumplings have a couple of very minor changes that make a HUGE difference and I’m totally not kidding. I’ll never make another apple dumplings recipe again.

This recipe reminds me so much of my grandma’s apple rolls recipe just because that sugar liquid is so deceiving. You pour it all around the rolls and it almost puts you into a panic attack seeing all of that liquid around the dough, like is this really going to work?! Are they going to be a soggy mess?!

And then those golden, crisp, pillows of dough come out and you’re a real life hero to the whole family.

Creating This Apple Dumpling Recipe

This is seriously the craziest apple dessert recipe. Most apple desserts seem to be inspired largely from the way apple pie is made. Think about it: apple crisp, apple pull-apart bread, and apple pie scones are all takes on the classic apple pie. 

This apple dumpling recipe is similar, but as I’ve been making recipes from others over the years I felt like there was always something missing. Sure, it is a good recipe and one that your guests will love you for, but couldn’t it be taken up a notch without changing the whole recipe?

We started experimenting, a lot. Too much. I could hardly stand to look at another apple dumpling recipe, let alone the apple dumpling itself.

And then it hit me, when you’re trying to do something awesome and it’s not coming together, go back to the original recipe.

So I did. And do you know what I discovered? The apples were not like an apple pie, they were completely plain. No, no, no! Apples need a little cinnamon sugar action to really drive home that fall smell and flavor!

Well don’t stop there, I thought. We need a little cinnamon action in the butter mixture as well. Too many recipes called for just butter and brown sugar. No. We need more. We added vanilla and cinnamon. Let’s get this party started!

Paula Deen Banana Pudding

Not Yo Momma’s Paula Deen Banana Pudding is a fluffy mixture of creamy pudding and whipped cream with cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk. Plus it’s served with Chessman Cookies on the bottom and on top!

I loved banana pudding anything as a little girl. If lip smackers had been smart when I was entering jr high they would have made bank off of a lip gloss for banana pudding anything. 

Did you buy Lip Smackers as well? Something like, white cake batter, or Dr Pepper? Those were the good ol’ days. 

Paula Deen’s Not Yo Mama’s Banana Pudding 

Paula Deen Banana Pudding, or the full name, Paula Deen’s Not Yo Momma’s (or Mama’s) Banana Pudding is a little bit deceiving so I just want to get this out of the way first, it’s not a banana pudding recipe. 

I mean, it is. There are banana slices under the pudding. But the actual pudding is a french vanilla pudding whipped up with sweetened condensed milk and cream cheese. 

That’s a legit pudding dessert. 

Ingredients for Not Yo Momma’s Banana Pudding

Here’s your quick grocery list to make your banana pudding with Chessman Cookies. 

• Chessman Cookies: traditionally used in a classic recipe for banana pudding and can be found on the cookie aisle
  • Fun Fact: This recipe is sometimes known as Chessman banana pudding!
• French Vanilla Instant Pudding Box: make sure it is instant pudding and not cook & serve pudding
• Cool Whip: if you can’t find a 12oz tub of Cool Whip, use 1 and half of the 8oz tubs
• Cream Cheese: make sure it is room temperature so that it doesn’t get lumpy
• Sweetened Condensed Milk: adds sweetness and creaminess to the dessert
• Milk: combines with the pudding mix the create the pudding
• Bananas: ripe bananas are the best for their sweetness and bold banana flavor

The measurements for each ingredient can be found in the recipe card at the end of this post.

Substitute for Chessman Cookies

Vanilla Wafers are the best substitute for Chessman cookies if you can’t find them. Chessman Cookies are usually by the Pepperidge Farm brand so look by the Mint Milano cookies.

How to Make Paula Deen Banana Pudding  

1. Set the Cool Whip in the fridge or on the counter for a faster thaw.
2. Whisk milk and the instant pudding mix together in a small bowl. 
3. In another bowl, blend the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk with a handheld electric mixer.
4. Fold the Cool Whip into the cream cheese mixture. 
5. Stir together the vanilla pudding mixture and cream cheese mixture. 
6. Layer 1 bagof cookies on the bottom of a 9×13 dish, top the cookies with a layer of bananas. 
7. Pile on the pudding.