Last year within a second of putting the finishing touches on what I knew for sure was The Lemon Bar To End All Lemon Bars a recipe intended for that little cookbook I was writing I couldn’t change stations and immediately became obsessed with creating something I wanted to call a pink lemonade bar. They would be about as awesome as a summer carnival the kind that rolls into town with sketchy rides that your parents won’t let you on but you do anyway (or so a friend once told me!) or maybe a play date at a friend’s house whose mom served prettier and therefore cooler lemonade than what you had at home. I had big plans for these bars but I had one tiny problem: I had no idea what made pink lemonade pink.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Food Network | 2017-08-24 14:00:03 |  33,750 Views |
Smitten Kitchen Whole Lemon Bars | Smitten Kitchen | Food Network
I don’t mean to sound naive; I knew that 99 percent of the pink lemonade recipes came from food coloring. I was also disappointed to hear that some other people had thought to make pink lemonade bars first—I’m the type who still clings to the foolish notion that there are new uncharted waters to bake in—but the vast majority of recipes also called for red food coloring. Surely before pink lemonade was made with red food coloring it was made with some kind of fruit like strawberries or raspberries or cherries right? This article has been written since last summer but even that doesn’t come to a clear-cut conclusion about what makes pink lemonade pink. The only thing that’s clear from the clothing dye and red hot candy debates is that if you can make it with something natural and/or tasty you’re probably an improvement over its parentage.
With that I decided that since raspberry lemonade is a delicious drink it must also be a delicious drink to have at a bar. The bars exceeded expectations and I couldn’t wait to tell you about them but then I ran into another drama: how would I tell you about this riff on a lemon bar that is about to release a cookbook with the lemon bar of my dreams in it? I mean how does that conversation go? “Here’s a lemon bar but there’s an even better one in my cookbook!” or “I actually found my lemon bar nirvana but this isn’t it!” As you can imagine neither of those options were very appealing so I put it off for the year which pretty much brings us to today where I decided that this is ridiculous and needs to stop. I can’t go another minute without telling you about this because you shouldn’t go another minute without having them in your kitchen. Because they are awesome. Because there’s room in the world for more than one idea of lemon bar perfection. These are pink and raspberry buttery shortbread and have that 1:1 crust to curd ratio I dream of in bar cookies. They’re as happy as a summer picnic which is exactly where they were hoping you’d take them this weekend. And by “them” I mean me. But these probably fit better in a bag so I get it.
Related: Lemon bars lemon muffins with raspberry top and more bar cookies more lemonade lemon stuff and more raspberry stuff.
