It is unclear to me why Starbucks has not hired me to manage their pastry case.  They are all over the place with it. I travel a lot and Starbucks ultimately takes up a large part of my caloric intake.  Now they have La Boulange providing their pastries.  I went to La Boulange in San Francisco and was duped into thinking it was some cool local situation only to find out it was owned by Sbux.  Realistically the greasy, dumb, pseudo hoity toity bs that is going on in the Sbux case now has nothing to do with the treats I had at La Boulange.  These Lemon Bars with Fresh Raspberry Puree would one up anything they have to offer in that overpriced pile of wasted calories. 

Andddddd they remind you of pink lemonade right?  My bestie Jessica and I used to hit up the downtown Naperville Lou Malnati’s infinity times during our childhood and bottomless pink lemonades were essential to the success of that outing.  Now I’m a little more anti the artificial coloring in said drink which is why these bars are so great, getting their color from freshly pureed berries.  I had a similar situation with my Fresh Honeydew Puree with Lime and Vodka where I wanted a green drink but only using things from nature.  Success.

 Inspired by Smitten Kitchen

You’ll need:

For base:

0.25 cups sugar

0.25 teaspoon lemon zest

0.125 (1/8) teaspoon salt

0.5 cups unsalted butter, cubed

1 cup flour

For Lemon heaven part:

1 cup raspberries (one container basically)

2 large eggs

0.75 cups sugar

0.25 fresh lemon juice (juice of two lemons)

1/3 cup flour

Powdered Sugar

Line a baking pan with parchment paper and butter it (I used some weird 9.5×7.5 but 8X8 would be ideal).  It’s awkward to smoosh this paper into the pan and butter, you just have to deal.

In the Smitten Kitchen version of this recipe she made the crust in multiple steps.  I elected to make this as basic as possible by mixing all the base ingredients at once and it turned out fine. 

lazy

So, put all of the base ingredients in the food processor and pulse until it makes a crumbly mixture. Pour that into your parchment lined pan and use the back of a measuring cup to pat in.  This won’t look great but really it’s just a vehicle for you to eat lemon heaven without having to put your paws directly on the pink goo part so don’t stress.  You’ll want it about 0.5 inches up the sides and even on the bottom. 

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes until its just browning.  Let cool while you make the filling (although I by no means had the will power to wait for the crust to completely cool before filling). 

Barely wipe your food processor and then fill with the raspberries.  Puree as much as you can. 

Press the puree through a fine-mesh sieve and hold onto the strained liquid.  You’ll only need 3 tablespoons so don’t hurt yourself trying to get every last bit of juice out of these guys. 

In a bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, and lemon juice.  Whisk in the 3 tablespoons of raspberry puree.  Whisk in flour. 

Pour into crust and bake for 30 minutes.

Now you really do have to exercise some will power and wait until they are completely cooled to taste. 

Once cooled cut and dust with powdered sugar.