Memorial Day and Lemon Bars

Memorial Day weekend is a time when the men and women who have died in battle fighting for our country are meant to be honored. How do we as Americans honor them? By calling up friends for BBQ and stuffing our faces with delicious food, naturally. Not that this is a bad thing, I mean I'm sure the people who have died in battle are pleased that we celebrate their bravery with food. Food is one of the few things people easily bond over and it certainly makes people happy (a little fat too, but hey who cares, right?). The three day weekend lifts people's spirits and the gathering of friends is also a delight. So for the Memorial Day BBQ I was invited to I decided to make dessert. Which sweet treat do I happen to have up my sleeve?
Lemon Bars. Wonderful, sweet, tart, devour-able lemon bars. Lemon is clean and lemon is sour, lemon is my favorite thing for a near-summer time dessert and Ina Garten happens to have the perfect recipe for lemon bars.
Now I have made these lemon bars before but instead of using normal lemons, I used ones of the meyer variety. What is a meyer lemon? It is a citrus fruit that originated in China and is thought to be a cross between either a normal or mandarin orange. It is not tart and has a mellower flavor that is quite enjoyable. While I loved my meyer lemon bars, today I felt a typical lemon was the way to go.
I would love to say I stopped there,  but I couldn't help myself.
I turned the lemon bars into lemon-raspberry bars.
I know, I know, I should have just kept it simple but I mean, lemon-raspberry bars, can you say "YUM"? Unless you don't like raspberry... or lemon bars... in that case though, you're just not human.
 Seriously though, if you don't like raspberry you can use any kind of berry you want. I think blackberry, strawberry, or blueberry would work beautifully but if you want to branch out the berry field, try cherries! Cherry lemon bars would be delicious now that I think about. Maybe I'll try them. I'll keep you posted.
Okay, back on track here, back to my lemon-raspberry bars. I started off by making a raspberry sauce on the stove that I let cool in the fridge while I made the dough for the crust. I used raspberries because they are the frozen fruit I had in my freezer. If wondering how I made the sauce, here's my guidelines from when I made customizable cheesecake. Once the sauce was made and the crust was par-baking in the oven, I began the lemon filling; which I may or may not have added way more than two tablespoons of lemon zest to. It won't hurt them, zest to your liking. I followed the lemon bar recipe exactly (minus the whole extra zest thing, "whoops") because Ina knows what she's talking about and I didn't need to doctor it. Once the filling was ready to be baked, I grabbed my raspberry sauce and dotted it all around in the filling. I took my spoon, though in hindsight a knife would have made it prettier, and marbled it throughout all the lemon filling and then into the oven they went.
Ina says to let them cool and serve at room temperature but I disagree. Lemon bars are at their best when their cold so I let my sit in the fridge for a couple hours before serving. Once nice and cold, dust with powdered sugar and cut into whatever shape your heart desires if wish to.

I had planned to make them prettier but even though I thoroughly greased my pan, the crust still stuck a little bit. Luckily, they still taste fantastic. 

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

-Madison