Lemon Squares: CSI
January 30, 2012 12:26 PM   Subscribe

I just tried this recipe with my new KitchenAid mixer...and it came out terrible. Can you help me figure out why?

The filling, which is supposed to come out sort of like a gel in a real lemon square, came out like a fluffy, spongy omelet. The lemon flavor was ok, but it had a weird, unpleasant aftertaste.

Possible scenarios, as I see them:

1. I used egg substitute instead of regular eggs. I know, I know...but it was all we had in the house, and I use them for baking all the time and I have never been able to tell the difference.

2. I whisked the "eggs" too long or at too high a setting (I was only at level 2 though).

3. It's just a bad recipe, and I should go with a non-light one.

Or a combo of all 3? I hate wasting food, so I'd like to try and figure out what to change for next time before trying this recipe again, or just ditching it.
posted by JoanArkham to Food & Drink (17 answers total)
 
Best answer: Based on the symptoms, I'm going to pin it on the egg substitute. I suggest you make it again with real eggs for comparison.
posted by ottereroticist at 12:29 PM on January 30, 2012


Best answer: Based on the picture, it looks like the filling soaked into the cake and gelled there. Did yours sit on top and not soak in much? If so, I would suspect over-mixing. Both the air bubbles and the flour could cause the filling to thicken too much to soak in properly if it was mixed too much.
posted by TungstenChef at 12:34 PM on January 30, 2012


You gotta have yolk (fat) for that gel. In most other baking, the egg is to provide structure where there wouldn't be gluten to do the job.
posted by cmoj at 12:35 PM on January 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


Seconding the egg beaters. They're chemically different, so they're going to behave differently when you bake them. It's very hard to sub for real eggs in baking.

Also, you can occasionally get bad lemons. Before you juice and zest them, wash them really well, and take a thin slice of one. Put it on your tongue for a moment and taste it. If it just tastes like a lemon (which is to say, really tangy), it's good. If you taste anything bitter at all, then don't use the lemon.

Good luck with your second attempt!
posted by Citrus at 12:38 PM on January 30, 2012


Oh yeah, the missing egg yolks! They provide both fat and emulsification properties to whatever you mix them in (they contain lots of lecithin, which is extracted and used as a commercial emulsifier). Without the yolks, the butter is in danger of separating from the rest of the mixture during baking. That would leave you with basically a sweetened, buttery omelet. Light recipes by nature leave little room for error, so a substitution like is much more likely to cause problems than in a full-fat version.
posted by TungstenChef at 12:40 PM on January 30, 2012


It's no yolk.

(The filling's a modified lemon curd. Lemon curd needs egg yolks, as it's basically operating similar principles to a mayonnaise, as the fat and acid emulsify.)
posted by holgate at 12:40 PM on January 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


Ditto to the lack of yolks, but I think it's a ehhh recipe. Lemon curd needs to be luxurious and trying to low cal it misses the point. You want low-cal? Eat sugar-free lemon jello.

Ina Garten's asks for 4 eggs and butter.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:50 PM on January 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks, all! (And that was eponysterical, Citrus...)

I'll try it again with real eggs, then toss the recipe if it's still no good and make real ones. (And try to not eat the whole pan...)

Even with real eggs, I'm worried about scrambling them with the KitchenAid. Any tips on speed setting/length of mixing? It says "until foamy" but I guess I'm not really clear on what that means. Like should the whole thing be foamy, or should I stop when I first see foam?
posted by JoanArkham at 12:59 PM on January 30, 2012


Foamy: fully combined, surface layer of bubbles. Shouldn't take long at all, then whisk at low/medium until you can't hear the scrape of the sugar. Go with superfine/caster sugar if you can.
posted by holgate at 1:11 PM on January 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


At least for this type of baking (I can't speak to seriously serious French pastry-type stuff), you only need to worry about "scrambling" eggs if you're adding something hot to the egg yolk mixture. Beating them while they're cold won't hurt, and you definitely want them well-blended (i.e., totally uniform egg-and-white mixture).

(If you were to add something hot to the egg yolk mixture, you could guard against scrambling/cooking the eggs by tempering them--adding the warm liquid very slowly while whisking the eggs continuously. You'd probably still want to run the mixture through a mesh sieve just in case any little cooked egg bits are there.)
posted by Meg_Murry at 1:16 PM on January 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


If I saw "until foamy" in a recipe, I would beat the eggs until there were small bubbles all over the surface of the liquid eggs. The main ideas would be to incorporate a certain amount of air into the eggs, and (more importantly) make the egg yolk was uniformly distributed throughout the mixture.

I'm willing to be corrected here, but I don't think it's possible to over-beat whole eggs. It's possible to overbeat egg whites when you're making a meringue or a soufflé or the like, but with whole eggs you'll never get the fine, persistent bubbles that you do with egg whites — the fat in the yolks destabilizes the bubbles.
posted by Johnny Assay at 1:17 PM on January 30, 2012 [2 favorites]


you only need to worry about "scrambling" eggs if you're adding something hot to the egg yolk mixture.

Or vice versa, so in this case, it's important to let the crust cool to the touch.
posted by holgate at 1:39 PM on January 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


I wouldn't even use a mixer for the filling--just whisk by hand. Really. You don't want to incorporate too much air into the eggs, you just want to break down the proteins a little bit. If you're trying to avoid that frothy, spongy texture, leave the mixer out of it and do it by hand. This will also prevent working the flour too much and forming strands of gluten that will make the filling chewy.

P.S. In response to the above, IMO it is *very* possible to overbeat whole eggs, when the point of the beating is not to add volume or to have the eggs act as a leavening agent.
posted by Bella Sebastian at 1:39 PM on January 30, 2012 [1 favorite]


I have heard of recipe failures from others who used egg or sugar substitutes. Not nice to fool Mother Nature?
posted by Cranberry at 1:53 PM on January 30, 2012


I have made lemon bars with a similar method many times before. As others have noted, you have an egg problem and also as others have noted, you do not at all risk scrambling the eggs.
The reason why I am jumping in however is to suggest you do not take the lemon bar crust out of the oven at all to cool down. When the crust has turned a golden brown you are pleased with, just lower the oven temperature as described and pour your lemon curd mixture over the top of the crust and continue baking. If nothing else it saves time and you still get beautiful lemon bars
posted by wocka wocka wocka at 5:33 PM on January 30, 2012


When the crust has turned a golden brown you are pleased with, just lower the oven temperature as described and pour your lemon curd mixture over the top of the crust and continue baking.

I'm not so sure of that, just because the recipe as described has a room-temperature beaten egg/sugar/lemon/flour mix at that stage. If you had a cooked-out lemon curd, made in a saucepan or double boiler, then pouring it onto a crust would surely work fine, but I don't see that working out with an uncooked mix -- though I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
posted by holgate at 10:36 PM on January 30, 2012


Response by poster: OK, I tried it again with real eggs and made sure not to over-mix. They turned out better but still not what I was looking for. It had a decent cookie crust (I may keep that part of the recipe), a thin layer of curd, and a top layer that was sort of spongy/chewy.

I think I'm kicking this recipe to the curb, and will look around for a "real" one. Thanks to all for your advice.
posted by JoanArkham at 6:29 AM on February 7, 2012


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