![Blueberry Pie Bars](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/08/16/dining/seneviratne-blueberry-pie-bars-horizontal/seneviratne-blueberry-pie-bars-horizontal-mediumThreeByTwo440.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
Blueberry Pie Bars
Samantha Seneviratne
2016 ratings with an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars
2,016
About 1 hour 10 minutes, plus chilling
Advertisement
Heat oven to 325 degrees and line a 9-inch square baking dish with parchment paper so it hangs over the edges on all sides by a few inches. (You may need to use two pieces of parchment.)
Make the crust: In the bowl of a food processor, pulse to combine the flour, confectioners’ sugar, lemon zest and salt. Add butter and pulse until a crumbly dough forms, about 10 seconds. (Or mix dry ingredients in a bowl and use pastry cutter to cut in butter, clumping the mixture together in your hands until it holds together.) Press dough into prepared pan. Bake until light golden, 25 to 35 minutes.
As crust bakes, make the curd: In a medium pot, whisk together the granulated sugar, lemon juice, egg yolks, whole eggs, cornstarch and fine sea salt until well combined. Place over medium heat and stir with a heatproof rubber spatula (or wooden spoon), making sure to scrape around the sides and edges of the pot, until mixture is simmering and thickened, 5 to 10 minutes.
Bring mixture to a boil and let cook for about 30 seconds, but no longer than 1 minute. Immediately strain through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl. Stir in butter, lemon zest and lime zest, and stir until butter melts. Stir in blueberries.
Pour mixture over crust, then stir to evenly distribute berries. Return to oven, and bake until blueberries begin to burst and curd starts to turn golden around the edges, 33 to 45 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool to room temperature. Chill in the refrigerator until thoroughly cold before cutting, at least 3 hours. Dust lightly with confectioners’ sugar right before serving.
In Step 4, does the curd go from the bowl back into the medium pot to keep cooking until the butter melts?
I've never put cornstarch in my curd. Is this to counteract the moisture supplied by the blueberries? It hasn't been necessary in the recipes that I've made
Can you offer advice regarding blueberries? Out here in the midwest, we more frequently find the big, fat, juicy, slightly sweeter blueberries (that are great for eating out of hand) as opposed to the smaller, more sour, more intense new england berries. IMHO, the photo's berries are *very* small.
How does this freeze?
When it comes out of the oven is the curd supposed to be somewhat runny or is it supposed to be solid
If you like the smaller New England blueberries, buy Wyman’s of Maine. They’re frozen and delicious. In this case, frozen is as good as fresh.
The heat from the boiled mixture should be hot enough to melt the butter if you work quickly to strain through the sieve (to remove any potential lumps.) The diced butter used for the curd should be at room temperature to help expedite the melting (in oppose to the cold butter used for the crust.)
Made this following the recipe but using an 8x8 square pan. Absolutely delicious!
I assume corn starch is used to firm up the consistency of the curd. Dorrie Greenspan also uses it in her Whole Lemon Tart recipe - it works very well.
I used arrowroot because we didn’t have cornstarch. Also cut down the sugar in the curd to a little more than a cup (we like tart) and the butter in both parts of the recipe to about 2/3 of the specified amount. Came out great! Delicious recipe.
Wow. That's a lot of butter... replaced lemon with lime juice and blueberries with rasberries. Delicious!
Yes, lemon bars freeze beautifully, and are much easier to cut cleanly if cut while frozen. Same thing with brownies.
It might be a little runny, but will firm up as it cools.
The advice would be to look for those smaller berries. The other way to go here is to make a straight lemon bar and them garnish with the (fresh) berry of your choice. Then juicy will not be an issue to confront in the bake.
There are 2 different kinds of blueberries here in New England. The small ones are wild Maine blueberries and are sweeter than any of the fatter, plump berries that come from New York, CT, and Massachusetts.
Should have checked the comments before making this. This never set and was a runny mess, which seemed to happen to a lot of people. Tasted good but had to eat it with a spoon.
Or you could cheat. Crust: freeze butter. Grate frozen butter into dry ingredients, mix with fingers, press, bake. Filling: Mix blueberries into 2 jars Bonne Mamman lemon curd. Bake. Chill. Serve. Nobody needs to know.
No mention of when the zest goes in?? I added it to the pot work everything else
Very soupy when the curd bakes. Make sure to read the reviews before making and not only the "most helpful" one's like I did
Made this today for superbowl and it was great. I made it exactly as the recipe and it came out great. Pretty easy if you follow the steps.
I am an experienced baker, including custards, and this was an expensive mess. I weighed everything, read the notes and followed instructions, no substitutes or deviations. The result is messy and sloppy, too rich in fats and sugars (I love both), and ugly. Never again.
I think a good recipe to give a go if you are new to making curds (like I am). Clear instructions and easy to follow. However, found this to be sickly sweet. I might try and refine the sugar with the next go…
I made these for a family BBQ and they totally flopped. The curd never set, even after hours in the fridge, and the crust did not hold up, it immediately crumbled and broke when trying to remove them from the pan. Additionally, the flavor of the lemon was too strong - disappointed by this recipe.
Terrible- the lemon curd never set. SO ugly because the blueberries exploded and was a drippy mess difficult to eat, but did taste good. Never make again because so unappetizing in appearance
Lemon curd didn’t set for me.
An unmitigated disaster of a recipe. Tried making one pan regular and another with 1-for-1 GF flour. Both a sopping, burnt mess. Baked for 45 min to try to get the curd to set—just burnt the crust and left liquid curd. Even *after* using paper towels to soak up the molten pools of butter on top of the cooled bars, there was still congealed butter on top of the still gel-like, oozing curd after a night in the fridge. One star; many tears. 4.5 sticks of butter & 8 lemons headed to the compost.
I read the reviews after the bars were in the oven, and panicked. Needlessly. The bars were great. I used more berries (homegrown, so smaller and maybe a bit more tart) and more zest (lemon and lime) than the recipe called for. Took care too cook down the curd on the stove before the step of putting in the oven. I did use a bit less sugar (175g), because I think all lemon bars tend to be too sweet (for me) and it worked out nicely. Results weren’t as pretty, but delish!
I made this 3 times and got it right the last time. Like most people I experienced a very loose curd (ha). So I reduced the lemon juice to 1/2 cup and the butter to 4 tablespoons. If you want a little more lemon flavor just add more zest and/or try mixing the zest and sugar with your hands to get more of the oil out or if you have some homemade lemon extract a tsp of that works. I also added blueberries part way through cooking it, which made a difference aesthetically.
Used 8x8 pan which made the top too thick Top too thick, so middle was runny, ick! Tasted good though I won't be on that hit British baking show Next time ill buy lemon bars at the store My husband thinks he doesn't snore Thanks NYT Cooking for never ending inspo I love to cook, thus I look like a hippo
Surprising to see so many negative comments. I'm no expert, but mine came out fine. I followed the recipe. Looking forward to sharing with family tomorrow!
Advertisement