Eileen's Perpetually Busy: Trying It Out- Lemon Bars!

My Better Homes and Gardens cookbook has a tasty recipe for Lemon Bars in it. And I love them, don't get me wrong, but the lemon portion of the recipe calls for 4 eggs. According to the serving size of 36 (36? Are they nuts? You'd get a bite sized piece if you cut it into 36 portions!) bars, there's 5 grams of fat in it.

Break that down to how many bars I usually cut it into, 15, and you get 12 grams of fat per bar. See?! They get you with those serving sizes! I'm not even going to figure out the calories and cholesterol. It's already high at 36.

So, I decided to see if I could make them a tiny bit healthier... the end result wasn't BAD, but it wasn't the SAME.

Here's how I made them:

Crust per Cookbook:

2 Cups flour
1/2 Cup powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 Cup butter (I used margarine)

Mix together dry ingredients, cut in butter with pastry blender (or forks work!). Press into greased 13X9X2 inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

Since this wasn't going back into the oven with the lemon topping, I baked for 23 minutes, which turned out a little long.

Make sure to allow it to cool.

Then I mixed:

1 pkg. Instant Lemon Jell-o Pudding
1 Cup whole milk
3/4 Cup water

The water was because all I had was whole milk and I was trying to cut some fat and calories from this. I suppose it would be better if I used 1 3/4 cups of skim milk.

Mix and beat or whisk for 2 minutes. Spread over top of "cookie" bottom. Chill for at least an hour and cut into 15 bars and serve.

Final analysis? It was good ( not as rich tasting), but wasn't worth the effort. The only thing this recipe did was bring down the amount of cholesterol in it (and if that is your goal then this recipe is for you!). The fat grams went from 12 per serving per the cookbook recipe, to 11.1 grams per serving using the pudding. Not to mention that the pudding was messier, or runnier you could say, than the original version of lemon bars.