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

Raspberry Pretzel Jello Salad

Some things just belong together…like raspberries and summertime or raspberry pretzel jello salad and your next BBQ! Three layers of jello salad joy.

Now I don’t know if this is a salad or a dessert, but it is so delicious that it doesn’t matter! It has a sweet and salty pretzel crust layer, a sweet cream cheese filling layer and a fruity tart jello layer on top.

I’m realizing people have a bigger opinion on berries than I ever knew. Are you a lover of raspberries and hater of blueberries? 

If you had to pick would you go strawberry or raspberry?

Our strawberry pretzel jello salad brought up so many requests for one vs the other and since I happen to love both, I tend to pull for team strawberry, but I really had no choice but to create a raspberry pretzel jello version. I mean, it’s all in the name of research, am I right? 😉

Plus it tastes like cheesecake but you serve it as a side dish. Who in the world is the genius that brought this first to Thanksgiving dinner?

Ingredients Needed for Raspberry Pretzel Salad

Here is your grocery list for each of the three layers of this salad:

Pretzel Layer

• Pretzels: any brand or shape of pretzel will work great since they crushed into small pieces
• Butter: helps bind the crust together and adds rich yummy flavor
• Brown Sugar: adds flavor and sweetness
• Sugar: adds more sweetness

Cream Layer

• Sugar: adds sweetness to the creamy layer
• Cream Cheese: make sure it is softened to room temperature so it doesn’t get lumpy
• Cool Whip: adds sweetness, structure and creaminess to the cream layer

Jello Layer

• Raspberry Jello: you will follow the instructions on the Jello box to make this layer
• Water: used to make the Jello
• Raspberries: fresh or frozen can be used and will work great

The measurements for each ingredient can be found in the recipe card below.

How to Make Raspberry Pretzel Salad

The steps for making this recipe are simple. Here they are broken down by layer:

Pretzel Layer

• Preheat oven.
• Combine all the ingredients well.
• Press into baking dish.
• Bake and let cool completely.

Cream Layer

• Beat the sugar and cream cheese together.
• Fold in Cool Whip.
• Spread over cooled pretzel layer.

Jello Layer

• Mix the jello powder and boiling water until the powder is dissolved.
• Stir in the rasp

Iced Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf Cake

Sweet, tart, moist and perfect for a spring brunch with the ladies…this iced lemon poppy seed loaf cake comes together in no time and is so outrageously delish!

If you’re going to have an iced lemon loaf cake, then you better have an iced lemon poppy seed loaf cake too because lemon and poppy seeds just belong together! I love the added flavor and texture the poppy seeds add.

Here’s the proof…glazed poppy seed bread, lemon poppy seed muffins, cinnamon lemon poppy seed bundt cake, lemon poppy seed cake. I’m just a little obsessed! We have all our poppy seed bases covered! I love a good loaf cake though, so I had to figure out the perfect recipe for a lemon poppy seed loaf cake. It just looks a little prettier with that glaze over a loaf.

Ingredients Needed for Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf Cake

You’re going to see lemon infused in every part of this cake. The loaf cake is soaked with a lemon glaze and then topped with a lemon icing. Here is what you will need for each part:

Cake

• Flour
• Baking Powder
• Baking Soda
• Salt
• Sugar
• Lemon Zest
• Meyer Lemon Juice
• Lemon Extract
• Butter
• Eggs
• Sour Cream
• Poppy Seeds

Smoked Peach Crisp

Peaches, glorious peaches! Why can’t peach season last all year? I guess I wouldn’t crave it and love it as much as I do if they were available all the time. This smoked peach crisp on the Traeger is our new favorite!

As you all know, peach crisp is a huge deal at my house. There’s absolutely not one single summer that goes by that I don’t make a peach crisp to end our glorious summer. I don’t know if it’s the golden nectar of sweet peach juice with that cinnamon crisp and a scoop of cold and creamy ice cream or if it’s the nostalgia I feel for a peach dessert but either way I always feel like it’s officially summer when I eat it. And best of all, my kids do too. 

Isn’t there something magical about a whole family loving one specific recipe? It’s not just that it’s a tradition, it’s not even that it’s finally something everyone likes, there’s truly something sweet and memorable about eating that one recipe together that everyone swoons over. 

So friends, may your glowing summer nights be a little longer and a little happier this year with smoked peach crisp!

Ingredients for Smoked Peach Crisp

You’ll need some peaches of course, and then a few things for the filling and a whole bunch of goodness for the topping. Here are the ingredients you will need:

For the Filling:

• Peaches
• Butter
• Cinnamon
• Brown Sugar
• Cornstarch

For the Topping:

• Old-Fashioned Oats
• Brown Sugar
• Butter
• All- Purpose Flour
• Cinnamon
• Salt

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

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Summer Blueberry Cobbler

Warm blueberry cobbler topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream is comfort food dessert at its finest! It is an easy summer dessert that is moist, sweet and always a hit!

So when I was testing (aka obsessing over making the very, very best blueberry muffin recipe), I started to play around with other blueberry recipes. I had overflowing containers of blueberries so how could I not?

I had originally planned on making a perfect blueberry crisp like our marionberry version but the whole fluffy muffin tops had me intrigued. Here’s the thing, cobblers are often have a topping that is way too heavy and sometimes gummy and I just was not a fan. After lots of testing I decided a cross between a delicious crumble and fluffy cake-like cobbler topping was the way to go.

So yes, you’ll prepare this by cutting in the butter but then a small amount of cream will be added along with baking powder to add the light and airy rise of a cake. It still gets crumbled all over those gorgeous berries and it ends up the most delicious summer blueberry dessert.

And if blueberries aren’t your jam, then any of these comfort food desserts should cure your cravings… peach cobbler, lemon blackberry cobbler, or apple crisp.

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