Lemon-Coconut Shortbread Bars

Lemon bars with coconut and shortbread, with a twig of thyme, arranged on a plate.

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Easy dessert of lemon shortbread bars made with coconut oil, for a casual nibble or throw in a picnic basket.

Course Dessert

Cuisine Any

Keyword lemon coconut shortbread squares

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 50

Cooling time 25

Total Time 1 40

Servings

Calories 149.4kcal

Author Susan Pridmore

Equipment

Ingredients

Shortbread Base

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
2 tablespoons coconut oil or butter, if you prefer
¼ cup sugar
¾ cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons rice flour
1 pinch kosher salt

Lemon Filling

⅓ cup of your favorite lemon curd

Shortbread Topping

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled
2 tablespoons sugar
⅓ cup all-purpose flour
1 ½ tablespoons rice flour
1 pinch kosher salt

Instructions

Line an 8″ X 8″ square baking pan with parchment paper or foil. Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.
Combine the Shortbread Base ingredients in the bowl of a food processor, fitted with a blade. Pulse until it comes together into a ball of dough.
Alternatively, use a pastry blender by hand.
Press the dough into the prepared baking dish, and flatten to evenly cover the bottom. Be sure to work the dough quickly with your fingers.
If the dough becomes sticky, lightly flour your fingers. If the dough becomes too soft to work with, transfer it to the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
Dock the dough by poking it with the tines of a fork about 20 times. There will be a lot of fork holes all over the dough, to keep it from bubbling up during baking.
Slide the dish into the oven, and bake for 25 minutes, or until the dough begins to firm on the edges.
While the Base bakes, mix together the ingredients for the Shortbread Topping in the food processor, and wrap in plastic. Place in the refrigerator until the Shortbread Base is finished baking and cooled.
Remove the Shortbread Base from the oven, and cool. Increase the oven temperature to 375˚ F.
Spread the lemon curd evenly across the top once the Base is cooled.
Remove the Shortbread Topping from the refrigerator and tear into pieces. Flatten the pieces with the heel of your hand on a workspace, scrape them up using a bench scraper, and arrange on top of the lemon curd.
It’s fine to overlap the Topping in places, leaving little openings to allow the curd to ooze through during baking. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes.
Cool for 5 minutes in the pan before removing to a cooling rack. This is a very tender cookie bar, and will harden slightly during cooling, making it easy to handle.

Notes

- The recipe calls for baking the base first, but I've done it several times now without doing it. The consistency is a little more tender if you don't do a little prebaking, but it will definitely work.

- I added ½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves sprinkled over the lemon curd in my recent versions, with great success.

- The best way to know it's done is to watch for a slight darkening of the crust around the edges. When that happens, I pull it from the oven. It will firm up as it cools. I don't remove the bars from the pan until they cool. This helps to retain their shape.

- It might not seem that there's a great deal of coconut oil in the recipe, but the lemon and thyme is very easily overwhelmed by the coconut flavor, and I was looking for a hint of coconut while allowing the lemon to shine through.

- I used a jar of lemon curd for this recipe, but you can absolutely make your own!

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