Creamy Coconut Lemon Squares

These are ubiquitous. Everyone loves a good lemon bar – even the chocoholics who say it’s not worth it if it ain’t got chocolate in it will snatch up a lemon square off the dessert table.
Their beauty lies in their simplicity that comes through their flavour and preparation. This is an easy recipe and it always delivers. Of course, there are some tricks to this trade…
An over-heated oven and a last minute distraction, like when you suddenly realize The One With The Holiday Armadillo episode of Friends comes on TV, can knock the “creamy” right out of the delicious lemon custard in these Creamy Coconut Lemon Squares.
Like any baked custard, including Creme Brulee and Creme Caramel, gentle heating and caring attention are the key to creaminess. Ingredients like sugar and flour protect the egg proteins from coagulation to help guarantee silky smoothness. The final texture of lemon curd is mainly the result of egg protein coagulation which induces thickening, but this is only desirable when it occurs to the right degree and does not end up in the formation of grainy clumps of egg white. Heat and acid (from lemon juice in this case) promote coagulation or bonding among egg proteins, but sugar helps to control this by interacting with proteins and interfereing with their bonding.

Cream adds body and mouthfeel to make the lemon layer that much more luxurious. It also dilutes the custard which keeps the proteins physically farther apart so that they don’t bond too quickly.

So you can see that beneath the image of a smiple recipe is still some major Science!

There’s no science to coconut.
Coconut is here becuase it tastes amazing when paired up with lemon and deserves a starring role in this story.

Creamy Lemon Squares featuring Coconut!

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