Oat Lemon Bars

With a boy-free apartment and a couple bottles of 2 buck, Meg and Becca unleashed their inner domestic and created a tasty variation on lemon bars. In this recipe, the flour used to make the classic lemon bar's shortbread crust is replaced by oats. Its texture has SO much more personality than the original and an added crust on the top facilitates sticky finger evasion. Also, condensed milk replaces granulated sugar for the filling, giving the filling a nice caramely undertone.

OAT LEMON BARS

1 can condensed milk

2 tsp. lemon zest

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 cup oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix milk, lemon zest, and juice in a medium bowl. Mix remaining ingredients in a separate bowl. Press half of the dough into the bottom of a 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 glass baking pan. Bake for ten minutes. Spread lemon mix over the baked crust. Sprinkle remaining dough on top and bake for approximately 20 minutes.

NOTES: When the girls finished making the crust mixture, they noticed that it was a bit dry. It seemed there wasn't enough butter to really bind the oats together. The bottom crust fared much better than the top, but initially it was a tad too crumbly to hold up as a bar. After cooling and sitting though, the bottom crust solidified nicely. Also, Meg felt they needed longer than 20 minutes to bake.