Lemon Bars with Coconut Shortbread Crust

Key ingredients

You’ll need 9 ingredients to make these coconut lemon bars. You can skip the powdered sugar (not pictures here) but it is recommended for serving. As always, for the full list of ingredients with quantities and step-by-step instructions, skip straight to the recipe card.

• Lemon zest –  Lemon is THE key ingredient in this recipe. I used 2 very large lemons that my husband’s coworker gave me from his tree. Store bought lemons tend to be smaller, so you may need 3 or 4 to get as much zest. 
• Lemon juice – Needless to say, freshly squeezed lemon juice is best, the bottled kind is not preferred but can be substituted in a pinch.
• We are using whole eggs in this recipe, just like how I make my easy tangy lemon curd. You don’t need to worry about separating the egg yolks and wasting the egg whites.
• You’ll need unsweetened shredded coconut for the crust but the sweetened kind can be used if that’s all you have. No need to adjust the amount of sugar in the crust in this case, it won’t make it too much sweeter.

Tips and tricks 

Butter temperature: let your butter soften at room temperature well ahead of time. I like using extra soft butter for shortbread dough because it’s easier to beat, the flour incorporates into the butter quicker, and you’ll less likely to run into “crumbly” dough. 

Butter wrapper: if your butter is very soft, you’ll likely have some leftovers stuck to the wrapper, you can use this to butter the pan and parchment instead of melting extra butter.

Butter the pan and parchment paper well: while I was testing this recipe, I was feeling lazy one day and didn’t want to melt extra butter for the pan. So I just plopped the parchment paper in the pan haphazardly. My lemon bar filling and crust flipped during baking and I ended up with lemon bar filling underneath the parchment paper and the crust floated up on top! Moral of the story: an extra minute of prep time will save you a whole lemon bar of heartache.

Adding lemon juice to lemon bar filling: you’ll want to add lemon juice to the filling mixture at the very last minute just when you’re ready to pop the whole thing back into the oven to avoid curdling of the eggs. This is why I wait to make the filling after the crust is finished baking. But if you want to prep the filling while the crust is baking, just hold off on adding the lemon juice when the crust is ready. 

Easy variations you might love

• Classic lemon bars – If you are not a fan of coconut, simply omit the shredded coconut in the crust for a classic lemon bar with shortbread crust.
• Lemon on lemon – swap out the crust with my lemon shortbread cookie recipe (without the glaze) for double the lemon.
• Strawberry lemon bars – you guessed it! Swap out the crust with my strawberry shortbread cookie recipe for a pretty pink crust.
• Raspberry lemon bars – similar to the idea above, use my raspberry shortbread cookie recipe for the crust this time.