Lemon Bar Bites

Oh yum.

Just looking at the pictures makes me want to make more of these.

Like most good recipes that we find these days, I discovered this jewel on Pinterest.

Click here for the original recipe.

These are so good.

Fairly labor intensive, but not difficult.

And, seriously, the lemon curd is too easy to make to justify buying the canned kind.

Just keep stirring.  Like gravy.

(if you have a little sister, this is her job)

Things I learned from making 2 separate batches:

1. Cream the butter and sugar in the mixer for twice as long as you think you should.  The only possible way to do this too long would result in melted butter.
2. If you do not whip the butter/sugar mixture long enough, your dough will be crumbly.  This is okay, it does bake together, but it is hard to work with and the cookies will not have as smooth a texture (and thus, be messier to eat and ugly).
3. Do NOT, under any circumstances, fill the mini muffin cups more than half full of dough.  There simply will not be enough room for filling if you do this.
4. This recipe makes 5-6 dozen cookies.  
5. There is no need to grease a non-stick mini-muffin tin.  The recipe calls for a 1/2 cup of butter.  That's a whole stick of butter.

*Ben does not think these should be called cookies.  And lemon bars are his favorite, so he gets a vote.  So, their official title is "bites."  But they are really 2 or 3 bites.  And thus, cookies.

Step 4a in the original recipe:
Remove from oven and using the end of a wooden spoon handle,
make an indentation in the center of each cookie

Step 4b in the original recipe:
Fill with a teaspoon of lemon curd.
(special thanks to baby V for help stabilizing this shot)

The ugly cookies you get if you "drop" a tablespoon of dough
into each cup.

How I recommend your dough look
before "dropping" it into the muffin cups.

The resulting beautiful, delicious, lemon bar bites.

And can you even imagine the derivations?!

Add lavender or rosemary to the dough for a spring twist.

Swap out the lemon with orange and add 1/4 tsp of almond oil and a 

good amount of cinnamon to the crust.

(that's an industry measurement)

The original recipe has a link to Fudge-Filled Toffee Pecan Sandies,

which look even more complicated and a very different kind of delicious.