Lemon Raspberry Sugar Cookie Bars

This year for Mother's Day we kept it small again: like last year, I went to Auntie Vicki and Uncle Rob's house. It was the three of us, Carly, and Nonni. This time, Uncle Rob's mom Ruth joined us as well. As always I offered to make dessert. Auntie Vicki suggested something fruity, specifically raspberry or lemon, and cookie bars. So after looking through my magazine cutouts, I started combing through Pinterest (it's actually a bit quick to go through when you're looking for something specific). I ended up finding a recipe that was both raspberry and lemon from the blog Butter with a Side of Bread.

Lemon Raspberry Sugar Cookie Bars (source)

Ingredients

Lemon Raspberry Sugar Cookie Bars

• 2½ cups all purpose flour
  
  
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup sour cream (see notes)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (see notes)
• 1 TBSP lemon juice
• 1 TBSP lemon zest (or extract)
• 1/3 cup fresh raspberries

Lemon Frosting

• 4 TBSP unsalted butter, softened
• 2 TBSP lemon juice
• 1 TBSP lemon zest (or extract)
• 2 TBSP milk
• 1 TBSP vanilla
• 3-4 cups powdered sugar
• 2-3 drops yellow food coloring
• additional raspberries, for topping

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 375°F.
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
4. Add in the egg, sour cream, lemon juice, zest and vanilla. Mix until combined.
5. Slowly add in your flour mixture while stirring until everything is incorporated. Add in the fresh raspberries and mix once more (to keep the raspberries from breaking too much, I folded them in with a spatula instead. Running the mixer on slow will probably also work).
6. Press the batter into a greased 9×13 dish and spread it out evenly with your hands or a rubber spatula.
7. Bake your sugar cookie bars for 15-17 minutes or until the edges have just started to turn golden (the rest of the bars might not look like they've baked but they have.).
8. Allow cookie bars to cool completely.
9. Mix all your ingredients together for your frosting until creamy. Add more powdered sugar or milk if needed for the texture.
10. Spread your frosting evenly over your cooled cookie bars. Cut into squares and serve with additional raspberries on top (or decorate with raspberries before cutting).

I think the one comment I heard frequently was "So refreshing!" which is definitely what you want to hear when fruit is involved (especially when you use non-fresh versions of one of the fruits 🙊).

• I didn't want to get even the smallest container of sour cream as I knew that would be too much and I wouldn't know what to do with the rest of it. So I looked up a good substitute and decided on plain yogurt. However, when I got to the store, the only size for plain yogurt was, essentially, a tub. Then I got an idea: use vanilla yogurt and leave out the vanilla in the cookie bars. Recipes say something similar all the time when advising what to do with salted vs. unsalted butter. This ended up working because the finished product was delicious.