LEMON SQUARES

LEMON SQUARES
1 cup Carbquik
2 tablespoons granular Splenda
4 tablespoons firm, but not cold butter
3/4 cup granular Splenda or equivalent liquid Splenda
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut
1 tablespoon Carbquik
2 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon juice, you'll need 1 small lemon
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind
1 tablespoon granular Splenda

In a medium bowl, combine 1 cup Carbquik and 2 tablespoons Splenda. Cut in the butter until it looks like coarse meal. Work into a somewhat crumbly dough with your fingers until no dry bits remain. Press the dough in the bottom of an ungreased 8x8" cake pan. Bake at 350?7-10 minutes, until lightly browned.

In the same medium bowl, whisk the eggs, Splenda, 1 tablespoon Carbquik, lemon juice and peel until well blended. Whisk in the coconut and pour over the crust. Use your spatula to evenly distribute the coconut. Bake until set, about 15-20 minutes. Dust the top with 1 tablespoon granular Splenda. Cool and cut into 2-inch squares.

Makes 16 servings
Can be frozen

With granular Splenda:
Per Serving: 73 Calories; 6g Fat; 2g Protein; 6g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 3g Net Carbs

With liquid Splenda:
Per Serving: 69 Calories; 6g Fat; 2g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 2g Net Carbs

The original recipe that I based this on only called for 2 tablespoons of butter to be worked into the Carbquik. It would have been too dry and crumbly, so I ended up using double that amount to get the dough to hold together. You'll need 1 small lemon to get the amount of juice and grated rind that you'll need. There will be extra juice, so measure it out. Use all of the lemon rind. The recipe also said to bake the bars with the topping for 25 minutes. I set my timer for 20 minutes and when I checked them, they were almost too done. I suggest checking them early. I detected a slight salty Carbquik aftertaste so if you have unsalted butter, I suggest using that.

These taste nice and lemony, but they're rather dry and crumbly. I'm not terribly excited by them, but I may have hit upon a way to make a graham cracker crumb substitute. After removing the bars from the baking pan, there were quite a lot of the crust crumbs left in the pan. They were very brown and almost had the flavor of graham cracker crumbs, but they couldn't be used for anything that required additional baking or they'd burn and they could use a little more sweetener. It might be possible to bake the lemon squares crust until browned, crumble it up in the pan and continue to bake the crumbs until fairly dark brown, stirring every few minutes. Without browning, they'd probably taste more like shortbread. It's the dark browning that gives them the graham flavor. The crumbs could then be mixed with a little melted butter and extra sweetener then pressed into a pie plate. The crust may need to be chilled before adding a filling. Note that I haven't tried this yet, so it may or may not work well.

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