So this month, I made homemade lemon bars. A lot. Actually since school started, I’ve made four different 9×13 pans of lemon bars. I love almost any lemon food, lemon cookies, pie, lemon cake–I blame my love of Sansa Stark playing into that.

There are mixes and shortcuts to make lemon bars, but I always use my favorite recipe to make them. They aren’t hard to make at all, even if you don’t think you can cook very well–don’t worry.

I followed the recipe and added my own adjustments. Most people hear the warning that recipes aren’t meant to be tweaked and agree with it, but some rules are made to be broken.

When I make lemon bars, I add a dash lemon juice to my crust, and adjust the sugar and lemon measurements to counter each other a little more. Some recipes have the ratio slightly off, that’s the trickiest part of lemon bars. Too much lemon juice makes them too tart, too much sugar makes them sickeningly sweet.

Multiple lemon bar recipes have little to no crust, but I like the crust on mine. It’s a good ratio: not enough crust means lemon bars have little structure, too much means that your mouth is a little dry. We all have to find our happy medium.

I constantly tweak my recipes. Someone could follow the recipe I have and have their lemon bars turn out completely different. But that also means no one can make lemon bars just like mine. 

Lemon bars are so versatile, they can be made for anything, like a bake sale, for birthdays, parties, practice, and anything else you can think of. However, we can’t have bake sales here at South due to a rule change, but you can make them anyway. Find a recipe, and have fun!