Bars

Key Lime Bars With A Gingersnap Crust

Just last week a new Sprouts Farmers Market came to Sunnyvale, CA (my home town) and I was so excited to attend the Grand Opening. I packed up all the kids in the car early on the day of it’s grand opening and we headed to Sunnyvale. One word to describe the store on that day was “chaos”. I basically walked through the outer rim of the store with all 3 kids walking like ducklings behind me ;-), briefly looked at some of the goodies in the middle aisles, and then headed for the exit.

I should’ve known that it would be a mad house. Well on that short excursion I happened to see a bag of key limes calling out to me and I knew I had to have them. So I came home to find out how early Sprouts opened each day and decided I would head out Saturday at 7 am to avoid crowds and lines of 15+ on a mission to get a bag of key limes.

Well I got more than just the key limes and had a blast in their store. So with my mission accomplished  I was ready to take on the challenge of baking something new. I have never baked with key limes or a regular lime for that matter. My first thought was to make a refreshing lime sugar cookie but after searching all over the internet, I found a recipe that caught my eye that used gingersnaps for the crust. Well that was perfect because I just purchased a fresh bag of gingersnaps from Sprouts too! So it was a done deal.

Key Lime Bars with a gingersnap crust would be my first recipe to make with key limes. The recipe itself was fairly easy and the only time consuming part was squeezing the limes and processing the gingersnaps for the crust. I only changed one thing about the recipe and that was just reducing the sugar to 1 cup.

The key lime bars turned out great! They had just the right flavor of lime and the crust was to die for. It’s one of those crusts that makes you want to keep eating another bar just for the crust. Everyone loved the bars so this will be something that I will definitely make again soon.

Key Lime Bars With A Gingersnap Crust
adapted from this recipe by Couldn’t Be Parve

For Crust:

1 cup gingersnap crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

For Filling:

3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup key lime juice
Zest of 2 limes
Confectioners sugar for dusting

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8×8 baking pan with foil or parchment paper so that it hangs over the sides and spray with nonstick baking spray.

Process gingersnaps in food processor until finely ground. Melt butter in microwave. Add butter and sugar to the gingersnap crumbs and process until combined. Press crumb mixture evenly into bottom of prepared 8×8 pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden. Let the crust cool while you make the filling.

Place eggs in bowl of mixer fitted with whisk attachment and whisk eggs on medium high speed until thickened, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the sugar while continuing to whip on medium high until the mixture is very thick and pale colored, about 5 minutes. Combine cornstarch and baking powder and stir to blend well. Add to the egg mixture and blend together on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Add the lime juice and zest and mix well. Pour the filling over the crust and bake for 30-35 minutes until the top is set and light golden. A tester should come out clean or slightly damp. Cool completely on wire rack. I recommend refrigerating before you cut into 2 inch squares. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and serve. Enjoy! They are so good!

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