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Vegan Lemon Bars
- Prep Time: 35 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes plus cooling and refrigeration
- Total Time: 0 hours
- Yield: 9-12 servings 1x
- Category: Desserts and Snacks
- Method: Oven and Refrigerator
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegan
Description
These are the lemon bars of your childhood memories, made vegan! They are sweet and tart and have a yummy shortbread type of crust.
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Crust
- 1 1/2 cups of almond flour
- 1/2 cup of brown rice flower
- 1/4 cup of tapioca starch also called tapioca flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt, optional
- 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
- 4–8 tablespoons of water (you’ll probably use 6 tablespoons)
Filling
- 1 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice (probably 4-5 lemons)
- 16 ounces of silken tofu
- 1/2 to 3/4 cup of 100% pure maple syrup (I usually use 3/4 of a cup)
- 1/4 cup aquafaba (the liquid that comes out of the can of chick peas/garbanzo beans)
- 1/2 cup of cornstarch or arrowroot
- 3 tablespoons of lemon zest (about 1 1/2 lemons)
- 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric for color
Instructions
Directions for crust
- Line an 8”x8” glass Pyrex type of baking dish with parchment paper. It’s helpful to squash the parchment paper up into a ball and then fit it around the dish. Make sure there is enough paper to overlap on all sides. You want the paper to stick up above the dish. Once you pour the lemon filling in you can cut the excess paper away
- Preheat the oven to 350
- Whisk together almond flour, brown rice flour, tapioca starch, optional salt
- Mix in maple syrup
- Mix in water. Start with 2 tablespoons and keep adding until you have a consistency that you can stick the dough together in a ball
- Once you have a ball, dust a cutting board or surface with a little flour
- Get a rolling pin and roll to a ¼ inch thickness. With your hands form it into a square that will fit your 8”x8” glass pan
- Pre-bake for 5 minutes at 350. After 5 minutes, remove from oven and set aside
Directions for filling
- Mix everything except lemon zest into a food processor and blend with the S blade until the tofu is completely liquified
- Pour into a bowl. Make sure there are no tofu chunks
- Mix the zest into the mixture
- Pour on top of the pre-baked crust
- Bake for about 30 minutes at 350. The outside (perimeter) of the square should be cooked and the inside will still be jiggly. 1-2 inches around the square should be cooked to a solid
- Remove and cool completely. You can place the square glass pan on top of a cooling rack but don’t remove the bars from the baking dish. It will still be watery/jiggly
- Once cooled completely, refrigerate for several hours or overnight until the you can put a knife in the center and feel that it is solid
- Cut into squares or bars
Lauren nailed-it on this on!!!! This is an awesome lemon bar recipe. Just the right amount of sweetness while everything else marries together for a wonderful mouthful of light, lemony, lusciousness.
Thank you, Ann!
This looks delicious! Unfortunately, I am unable to eat nuts or seeds. Do you have a suggestion to replace the almond flour?
Carla, you can use oat flour. I am not sure if that will affect the color, but I doubt it.