Hello, how are you? Are you longing for summer as I am? Is there still snow on the ground where you live? (Was there ever snow on your ground?) We still have a few patches of icy crumbly snow here and there. Not anything you could make a snowball with. It’s mostly dirt at this point and more ice than snow. We just returned from a week in the southwest. I love Michigan, and I love Arizona. These two places could not be more different—Michigan with its rolling hills and endless evergreen forests, and water; so much water. Yes, we have water in the form of lakes, over sixty-two thousand lakes, and the most fresh water shoreline in the US. Michigan has water in the form of snow, sleet, rain, fog, and, in my opinion, the worst, humidity. We are spoiled with water. Arizona is brown, prickly, rocky, dry, and my favorite sunny! It seems where the land lacks in blue, the sky makes up for it. Blue skies and sunshine feed my soul, just as much as fresh water and green hills.
This was our first time in Tucson. It won’t be our last. So many great restaurants, great hiking, great views. Everywhere you look there are brown mountains, contrasted with blue sky. We stayed in a quaint area just south of downtown called Barrio Viejo. We could walk downtown, we had several great restaurants we could walk to. I didn’t cook all week, but got lots of inspiration! Our favorite restaurant was La Frida, we were told to get there early because it’s small and fills up fast; 4:30 pm on a Friday, we had an hour wait. I would wait three hours after eating there once. It’s from scratch, Mexican, and seafood. It’s my new favorite restaurant on the planet.
It’s been a minute since I’ve written here. I have been busy with the continuous update of Eat2gather.net, and the renovation of our kitchen that turned into the renovation of most of our upstairs. Are you familiar with the phrase “a can of worms”? We built this home 25 years ago and haven’t changed anything other than the paint. So can of worms it is! I am very happy with how things have turned out. I hope to give you a before and after soon. If you care, I have been giving some updates on my Instagram, you can watch the whole dadblamed thing in my Highlights!
As I was saying, Spring is in the air. The time change was today, it sprung ahead and I stayed behind. I’m worse than a toddler these days with the time change. It throws me for a loop. I feel like for a couple of days I’m bumping into walls, and repeating myself. You? Does the time change affect you? I thought I would share a recipe here that will bring you some sunshine, and wake you up with an abundance of citrus…and butter. My citrus butter bars are the outcome of me wanting to have Starbucks lemon pound cake in cookie form, but then I had lemons, oranges, and limes in my refrigerator so I used them all then I ran out of time, so I smooshed the dough into a sheet pan, baked them, drizzled them with a glaze made from a combo of all three juices and sprinkling of leftover zest. Voila! When I was catering, these bars were a favorite. Here for you is a bar of sunshine!
You can get the printable version of these citrussy shortbread bars here.
Glazed Citrus Butter Bars
makes 24-48 squares depending on how you cut them
You will need a 12x15 inch sheet pan, a zester, a hand mixer or a stand mixer.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2 cups butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
3 egg yolks
4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lime zest and lime juice
2 tablespoons lemon zest and lemon juice
2 tablespoons orange zest and orange juice
Glaze
2 cups of powdered sugar
5 tablespoons of leftover lemon/lime/orange juice from cookies
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
use any leftover zest as garnish, sprinkling over top of the glaze
Directions:
- Beat together sugars and butter, taking time to scrape down sides of the bowl. Add egg yolks one at a time. Add 3 tablespoons of the zest from the lemons/limes/oranges. Mix salt and flour together, gradually add to butter mixture. Dough will be crumbly. Drizzle in 4-5 tablespoons of citrus juice while mixing, scrape down sides of bowl making sure that everything is combined.
-Dollop dough out onto pan. Lightly flour hands and press dough evenly into all corners of the pan.
- Place bars in a preheated 350 degrees oven for 25 minutes. Remove. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in pan, then flip bars out on to parchment paper. Lay a sheet of parchment on top of the bars, if you have a large cutting board, this will work as well, flip the bars out of the baking sheet.
- Let cool 10 minutes longer while you make the glaze.
- Whisk glaze together and drizzle glaze over top of bars, and sprinkle with the remaining citrus zest. Cut into squares, store in an airtight container. I prefer to store these in my refrigerator.
I hope you love this recipe as much as we do. I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what sort of recipes you are looking for as we get into warmer weather.
Have a great week. Cheers to Spring! Sheila