How to Make the Loveliest Lemon Squares! | LIVESTREAM w/ Anna Olson

Recipe below! Cream cheese is the real secret behind these lemon squares – they lend richness but also a tang that enhances the tart lemon. It also gives the lemon filling structure, so that it doesn’t leak into or underneath the shortbread base. SEE BELOW for sugar-free modifications!

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Makes 1 8-inch (20 cm) square pan
Cuts into 25 or 36 squares

The squares can be kept refrigerated for up to 3 days.

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• Ingredients •

Base:
1 cup (150 g) all-purpose flour
¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
½ cup (115 g)cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Filling:
4 oz (120 g) cream cheese, at room temperature
1 ½ cups (300 g) granulated sugar
¼ cup (37 g) all-purpose flour
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
½ tsp baking powder
½ cup (125 mL) lemon juice
4 large eggs
Icing sugar for dusting, optional

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• Directions •
1. Preheat the oven to 350F (180 C). Grease and line an 8-inch (20 cm) square pan with parchment paper so that the paper comes up the sides.

2. To prepare the base, pulse the flour and sugar in a mini chopper or food processor to combine. Add the butter and pulse it until the mixture is an even crumbly texture, but the dough should not comes together. Press this into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until the base turns golden around the edges. Prepare the filling while the crust cools.

4. In a mixer, or by hand, beat the cream cheese with about half of the sugar until smooth. Add the remaining sugar, flour, lemon zest and baking powder and blend until smooth (switch to a whisk if combining by hand). Add the lemon juice and eggs and combine until smooth. Pour the filling over the cooled crust.

5. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the edges are set and just show signs of soufflé-ing a little, but the centre should still have a bit of a jiggle to it. Cool the squares to room temperature before chilling for at least 3 hours before dusting with icing sugar and slicing.

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• Sugar-Free Modifications •
Please note that these points relate only to recipe feasibility.

Monkfruit Sugar (blended with erythritol)
– Use 1:1 by weight or volume in place of sugar, both in crust and filling
– Omit baking powder
– Bake time remains the same
– Crust is slightly crispier than with sugar

Stevia 1:1 Baking Blend
– Use 1:1 by volume (not by weight) in place of sugar, both in crust and filling
– Omit baking powder and lemon zest
– Reduce bake time of filling to 20-25 minutes
– Volume of filling is reduced

Agave Syrup
– Use 1:1 by volume in filling, but use stevia baking blend or monkfruit sugar in base
– Omit baking baking powder
– Increase bake time to 45 minutes

Well hello everyone and welcome once again to another o live stream I I’m Anna Olsen I’m thrilled to be here and as we’ve done over the last few live streams I’ve presented recipes that are truly reflective of comfort baking and now that it’s spring in North America I get so excited for lemon

Desserts so I am making my signature creamy yet Tangy lemon squares and I can’t get wait to get into it but you know I always have to say a quick round of Hell to everyone who is joining this evening um Bonnie and Bill and Craig and Zayn I know you’re watching Mom hello

Mar Beth and Kathy I saw your names pop up there and I know um I want to say hello to everyone who join me at our session at the local library today we had a blast playing food Bingo it was lots of fun and taste testing salty sour

And sweet things but speaking of sour and sweet let me get right into this recipe uh I’m going to start with a crust if you know a good lemon square first of all it should have some height to it should be substantial it has a shortbread crust and then that Tangy yet

Somehow creamy custard like filling so I am starting with my mini chopper to make the short bread crust and it is simple oh and I should mention I have put a lot of work into testing this exact same recipe using different sugarfree Alternatives and so you want to stay

Right through the end of this live stream because I will walk through my different uses and the different baking adaptations of those sugar substitutions so to start these lemon squares let’s get the crust going I’ve got my all-purpose flour and I do find a mini chopper works best

If you’re making your crust by hand you’ll want to use a pastry blender um and work your butter very finely because the crust is simply as you see the full recipes is below all purpose flour a little bit of granulated sugar and then I’ve got cold butter cut

Up into small pieces the mini chopper makes fast work of it if you have a food processor that will work as well and hello to everyone joining me I see the thread is really busy today so thank you for joining me from all over the world

Um and all over the world we love a good lemon square so now I’m just going to pulse this if a food processor or a chopper you tend to see baking instructions when it comes to making anything pastry related you pulse the pastry and that’s to bounce the

Ingredients so that way it’s not blending just at the bottom and then you have flower at the top so you can really see it bounce and it doesn’t take long at all oh my goodness someone just wrote about flashback my days at Kelsey yes I’ve come a long way from my days at

Kelsey I don’t know did they have a lemon square on the menu then and Katie’s asking can you make this recipe gluten free and while I am focusing on sugarfree options with this particular recipe this would adapt very easily to gluten-free baking so if you have your favorite gluten-free pastry blend uh

Baking blend I would use that for the crust and for the little addition in the filling let me just get this out of the way and before I get the crust into my 8 in or 20 cm square pan you might have seen me do this technique before but

It’s very important when you’re making lemon squares particularly to line the pan with parchment paper that way you can pull out the chilled Square easily onto put it on your cutting board to slice it otherwise it can be really literally sticky to get your lemon squares out of your baking pan so what

You want to do and I know you’re probably going to an overhead shot thank you Michael you want a piece of parchment paper that’s bigger than the pan itself I lightly greased the pan and it’s not for the sake of the lemon square it’s to get the parchment

Paper to stick then what you do is you fold your piece of parchment paper in half and then that in quarters so it’s kind of like a napkin and with a pair of scissors where you have the open Corners you cut in at a 45°

Angle open it up and now when you drop this into your square pan those triangles will overlap and this is fantastic for anything with a really wet filling like the lemon bars or if you make buttertart squares this really helps keep the filling from leaking and if you’ve made

Lemon bars before has anyone had the trouble of having the filling sort of go underneath the shortbread and all of a sudden lift the shortbread up I’ve got a few little tips that will help prevent that so first I want to point out notice how this doesn’t look like a cookie

Crust it is very dry and crumbly and you should expect that from this crust because the moisture from the lemon filling is going to hold it in place and I also don’t want to exercise the glutens or make it too wet and then have that crust shrink a little bit

Because if you have that shortbread crust pull away from the outside edge of the pan that will allow the filling to seep in and underneath the crust and the other technique as you press it in gently you don’t really have to firmly press it down if you want you can use

The back of a measuring cup I am really glad you can’t zoom in in close see a close-up shot of that drawer it needs a little tidying spring cleaning right use the bottom of your measuring cup and press it in not too firmly as I mentioned but what you want

To do is press a little bit of the crust up along that outside edge and again that’s about creating a bit of a barrier so that lemon filling which is essentially a custard won’t seep in and underneath your crust there we go now how easy is that I

Know you’ve got that I’ve preheated my oven to 350 and this takes about 15 to 18 minutes and you’re looking the center of the SHP rad crust won’t change a whole lot you’ll get just a hint of light brown around the outside edge so I’ll pop that in the

Oven set my timer 15 should do it and just to show you because you do want to let your crust cool before you put your lemon filling on top of it just to show you what it looks like so it takes on a butter yellow color that little light

Brown around the edges the paper stays in place which is nice the reason you want to make sure you are letting that crust cool is if you pour your filling onto a warm crust it’s going to absorb it and then that filling will seep right through and you

Won’t get that nice short breath crispness um at the base of your lemon squares I’m seeing lots of nice comments people watching from everywhere Southampton California Ecuador Anton yes I’m feeling literal today I thought a lemon if you’ve got a shirt with lemons on it you have to wear it when you’re

Making lemon squares so the great thing about the lemon square filling is you can make it by hand I should mention this this is the lemon square recipe uh that I would use when I had my bakery a number of years ago this was the lemon

Square that was always on display it was one of the top selling items the secret ingredient I know I say it right at the very top of the recipe page but it’s what really sets this lemon square apart a little bit of cream cheese it doesn’t make it taste like a cheesecake it’s

Only 4 oz or 125 G so that’s that’s half a packet if you’re using the brick what I love about this recipe is you can indeed use soft cream cheese or spreadable cream cheese with this recipe and that makes it easy to mix by hand

And I do find generally when it comes to this lemon square filling having your eggs your lemon juice and your cream cheese at room temperature ju it just simply makes it easier to blend there’s nothing technical or scientific that’s happening it just makes it simpler as

You can see this cream cheese is nice and soft and there is a lot of sugar in this recipe as you’ll see but I also add a lot of fresh lemon juice and you need the two to balance each other out and also to give the lemon square filling a

Volume and when I show you the sugar substitutes side by side to the original recipe you’ll really start to understand what that differences and how the different Su sugar substitutes behave so now as I add some of this sugar it’s going to soften up and dissolve into the

Cream cheese a little bit and this is a great opportunity for me to add the lemon zest now while I’m creaming the cream cheese and the sugar together those granules of sugar will draw out the flavor from the zest so I I want a generous amount about 2 teaspoons not so

Much that it tastes too bitter but you really want to accentuate that lemon flavor get the Tang from the juice but we really want that beautiful well-rounded lemon flavor after you’ve finished a bite that makes you want to take another bite I see people are having baking conversations on their own talking about

Food release spray um oh and someone watching from koala Lampur Malaysia Vancouver lots of people watching today oh this is great I see oh I see I’m watching the count go up we’ve got 255 people watching that’s impressive just right this minute okay I’ve got a nice fine grating of lemon

Zest there just set the lemon aside work that in sprinkle in a little more sugar and now you’ll see some lemon square recipes call for corn starch others call for flour and I find because the lemon square filling only bakes in the oven for about 30 35 minutes that

You don’t lose that chalky Taste of corn starch so I prefer using flour and for those of you who ask about the gluten-free options you again could use a gluten-free baking blend here actually I almond flour would be great in the base but I wouldn’t use it

In the filling because you wouldn’t lose that texture um because almond flour while fine is not as fine as allpurpose flour and now this is a curious ingredient maybe unexpected in a filling it’s half a teaspoon of baking powder and I know you Bakers you know all my

Recipes and all the cakes and cookies and baking powders and lots of things but you wouldn’t think it would be in a lemon square and the reason I put it there is I find you get it’s not about the lift of the filling itself but what

You get when you add the baking powder that you don’t get if you leave it out is just the thinnest little crust on the top of the lemon square so that once it’s chilled and you want to dust it with icing sugar the icing sugar doesn’t dissolve and disappear and I think

That’s very very important in an attractive looking lemon square you can leave it out if you want it won’t have any technical consequence but you’ll find you have a softer almost chees cheesecake or custard like top to your lemon square so let me finish adding the rest of my

Sugar just move those out of the way and how is um I’ve got a comment from Bada Bing from Staten Island is letting us know they’re there um now this is interesting someone brought up Vegan Cooking there are vegan options for this recipe but it’s not as simple

As a one toone substitution so that’s something I’d want to come back to you if you’re interested in some vegan baking recipes please let me know in the comment thre once this video gets posted I keep an eye on the chat thread for a while uh you’ll see from last week’s

Caramelized apple cake and the blueberry muffins and I made those oatmeal chocolate chip cookies um that I’m answering your baking question so if there are speciic specific recipes or interests I’m keeping an eye out and watching so now the last addition now let’s take a look at actually not the

Last Edition I do this all the time it’s a lemon square let’s not forget the lemon juice I am going to want to switch to a whisk here and I am a great believer that if you’re making a lemon dessert and lemon is the star well you should use fresh lemon juice so

Because of all the uh lemon square options I’ve been making playing with the sugar-free options I had lots of lemons that were zested so I could juice them but you’ll notice even though lemon juice has a light pale color it does not change the color of this lemon filling the lemon color

Actually just comes from the eggs and that’s what sets up this lemon square so now the lemon juice is is liquefying that sugar and I’m just making sure it’s nice and smooth but it doesn’t have even with that amount of cream cheese it’s so small it doesn’t seem to create any

Lumps or issues at all all right and we do it seems like we do have a few people interested in vegan recipes so now it’s nice and liquefied we can add our eggs one at a time and you want to mix them well and all of a sudden this will start to look

More lemony even though we know it’s nice and tangy in terms of egg substitutes for a recipe like this when you want a nice smooth filling a flax seed is not your ideal option that is more suitable for cookies or banana breads where you don’t mind that little speck

But for something in that cheesecake style world or a recipe like this you would want to use silk and tofu and as a pure protein if you blend this combination with the silk and tofu in a food processor until it’s nice and smooth bake it you you will find it sets

Beautifully and Lonnie you’re asking about a diabetic version I want you to stay with me because I tested three sugar-free alter Alternatives with this exact recipe you’ll already see the the full baking um variations at the bottom uh of the recipe window so if you expand it

The full recipe is there and I have the sugar-free options at the very bottom but I want to show you and talk through them because I they do look very very different so there we go that’s it for the filling relatively simple as recipes go but that’s part of the joy of these

Comfort bait is they’re not meant to be overwhelming you’re supposed to sort of melt into a craving decide you want to make it make it and not have to wait too long before eating it so now I’ll pull my cooled shortbread base now our friend from Staten Island is

Asking about using brown sugar you can but you’ll lose that lemony character uh from The Filling so keep that in mind um if that’s what you would prefer to do and I pour this filling see I told you it was a generous amount of filling we re I really want

This lemon square to be about the filling with just enough shortbread layer that it doesn’t collapse when you pick it up to eat it all right now this I pop into the oven it takes about 35 minutes to bake and what you will see happen is a little

Bit of suling around the outside edge and then it’ll be sunken in the middle and when you see the middle start to sule and meet the height of the outside edge that’s when you know you’re done this is not as sensitive or fragile as a cheesecake so you don’t have to worry

About it cracking unless you forget and you don’t set the timer and it goes an extra 15 or 20 minutes in which case then it probably will crack and that’s what icing sugar is for all right I’ve got my crust is almost there I’ll wait for it to beep it’s not

Done and now after you’ve pulled them out of the oven you want to let your lemon squares cool completely and then this is the original can you see that just fine Michael and this is what I mean about a substantial lemon square it’s got lots

Of heft and height to it you’ve got the distinct not soggy shortbread base and then you’ve got that beautiful Tangy yet creamy uh lemon topping to it I to I I got carried away I didn’t intend to dust the whole thing with icing sugar but I

Just forgot it was like I was expecting you to come over and try some and I wanted to get them ready so I’ll put a you on a plate and I’m not going to take a bite yet because as I said I’ve got a few other options to show you

Um oh Lissa’s asking a very good question about getting lemon flavor to come through you’re mentioning lemon poppy seeds muffins specifically and you don’t want them to be claggy that’s where the lemon zest comes in because the juice lends tartness and acidity but actually not a lot of big lemon FL

Flavor the zest comes in and in order for it to not be too bitter just like I did with this lemon filling I added the zest to as I was working the sugar to let the friction draw out the essence um the oils from

It so now oh I don’t want to let this go too far away so we’ve got these gorgeous lemon squares now I’d like to take a few minutes because this recipe was so simple I wanted to make sure we have a good amount of time and valuable time

Together and I want to show you what I have been playing with I have a number of sugar-free options and let me know Michael is that placement okay okay oh and Terry if I could take a moment Terry’s asking a very good question about where in the oven to

Place your lemon squares ideally I favor the center of the oven that way you get even air flow so you’re not if it’s too high up you don’t want the top to Brown too much um but you want it to cook evenly and you’ll also notice I used a

Metal pan for my lemon squares I find it’s too easy to overcook the outside of lemon squares if you use a glass pan I think when I think of old school lemon squares I think of those glass dishes but they’re actually not the best for baking something delicate

Like a lemon square okay let’s get step back to sugar-free options cuz this was a very interesting exercise and I’d like to say right off the top I am dealing with sugar-free options as a baking technician explaining how this affects the lemon square recipe I am not a

Registered dietitian so I leave it to you to do your research and decide which sugar alternative is best for you but in terms of how these options work in this lemon square recipe so these are onetoone substitutions first I’ll talk about monk fruit sugar which most monk fruit sugar

Baking Blends are a combination of monk fruit sugar and arrol which are both PL actually everything every sugar alternative I worked with is plant-based this is what mon fruit sugar looks like it looks exactly like granulated oh there’s my crust what a what a time to take a break

Suspense want to hear about the monk fruit sugar here we go all just quickly there’s the crust out of the oven quick overhead shot and I better set my timer for that filling there we go back to the monk fruit sugar right here so it looks like granulated sugar most

Monk fruit sugar baking Blends call for a one:1 substitution this was a learning curve for me because my lemon juice and my eggs were not at room temperature they were a little bit cold and what I’ve discovered is monk fruit sugar does not dissolve as quickly as granulated sugar

So I actually got a little texture into the lemon squares so these are the lemon squares with the monk fruit sugar they don’t have quite the volume nor the shine sugar lends more to baking than just sweetness it lends gloss and it lends structure so the structure was

Fine this is why lemon squares work very well in sugar-free baking because you have the eggs that sets them so you know you’re going to have a sliceable delicious treat but you can see the volume is a lot smaller it’s not clear or it doesn’t have a that sort of

Glossiness like a sugar lemon square the flavor was good it was intense and so I found with all of these uh sugar-free Alternatives removing the baking powder you don’t need it because you don’t have the same gooiness um so I pulled the baking powder out the aftertaste was

Very Tangy um so I think you could almost cut back on the lemon juice a little bit but it wasn’t unpalatable so that’s why I made minimal changes to the monk fruit sugar option for this very recipe now let’s talk about Stevia if we could over here I’ll give you a second

To move over Michael so Stevia is a plant a green leaf plant and when you buy stevia baking Blends Stevia is so concentrated and intense that you have to if you were to just add it on its own to something you have to replace the volume of sugar with

Something so Stevia baking Blends typically have maltodextrin and so this is very powdery and light and you’ll see in my instructions while with monk fruit sugar you can do one to one by volume or weight if you’re measuring in North America I can’t speak to what European

Or other options are um this is to be measured one to one by volume only because if you try and weigh it you’ll end up with like four liters of of it is very light now what I found interesting when I was working with the stevia blend the

Maltodextrin which is just it’s a space filler it actually dissolves into nothingness so when you add this to your cream cheese all of a sudden you watch it disappear so compared to the normal lemon square look how much flatter it is it’s much flatter you don’t have the

Moisture the other big point because you don’t have that the same thing where where sugar dissolves turns fluid and then reincorporates with your other ingredient Stevia doesn’t so your bake time is significantly reduced because you have less volume and you don’t have that liquid in there and it does have I

Did find even though I pulled it out I pulled my squares out a good 15 minutes before the original bake time so it was only in the oven about 20 minutes I still got fine cracks not huge cracks but little cracks on the surface I found the taste delicious that said Stevia can

Have a hint of a bitter aftertaste what I will say that’s not a terrible thing because in a lemon dessert you want that hint of bitterness but not too much so this is where I would pull out the lemon zest and rely on actually the the nature

Of stevia to give you that bitter balance against the sweetness in the lemon square now the final sugar alternative I played with was agave syrup now the big difference with agave compared to monk fruit and Stevia monk fruit and Stevia are have zero calories Agave has actually slightly more

Calories than sugar what’s interesting is it registers much lower on the glycemic index um so your I’m not going to get into again the the reasons for choosing it so Agave works for some people as a choice what I have to say is it made a luscious sugar-free lemon square and so you’ve

Got because it’s a syrup base you can see you’ve really got that creaminess the yellow color definitely came through on the agave and The Taste was delicious and I think Michael we agreed the agave syrup version was our absolute favorite of the three um the baked time was a

Little bit longer because it is a syrup and I should mention we I didn’t put the agave syrup in the shortbread crust because it’s liquid so I used the stevia in the shortbread crust and the Agave just for the filling and then obviously because icing sugar is refined sugar I

Didn’t put icing sugar on any of these squares they can be enjoyed just as is so I hope this has given you a lot of insight look at these three different squares we’ve got our conventional monk fruit Agave Stevia what I can tell you is Bonnie is

Going to be getting an awful lot of lemon squares today I even have a backup batch in the fridge because I was trying to cut a recipe in half and then I forgot and I made twice as much lemon filling like I said I had zested lemons

Everywhere over the last day or two um and then oh good question do I make canoli I have made canoli filling I’ve only once made canoli shells they are a bit of a project so I will invite you these questions are fantastic your comments are great please I invite you to continue

This conversation this live stream will be posted the channel so you can go back and review it take another good look at these sugar-free options I know you are absolutely going to adore this lemon square recipe there is a reason it was a bestseller um at the bakery there was no

Possible way I could ever pull it off the menu and I invite you to try it and most of all I hope you feel good about what you’ve baked and especially feel good when you share it with those you love cuz that’s why we’re all here now I

Have I have a a couple of things we’re coming and going and moving around a lot the next couple of weeks so I will be back with live streams not next Tuesday though I will see you on Tuesday April 9th for the next live stream and we are

Going to continue this Comfort baking thread and while I have some ideas of what I’d like to make I’m in the mood for chocolate I would love to hear from you if there are specific recipes you would like to see from me in that Comfort baking world I am here to share

Them with you and before I see you live on April 9th I will be launching here on the channel a Anna’s spring favorites Series so it’s a series of recipes we’ve taped ahead of time and they’re being put together so you have lots of delicious recipes coming your way it’s a

Pleasure as always you Bakers are the best your comments I’m seeing the Emojis flying everywhere especially lots of lemon ones I hope everyone gives this recipe a try and I wish you a delicious week ahead cheers everyone you’re the best w