Savory Sundays: White Chip Lemon Streusel Bars

Hello and welcome to another edition of Savory Sundays. I like this feature too much I think, as all week I'm wondering what I'll feature on the upcoming Sunday and try and plan meals around that. It's good though since it forces me to be creative, and I got creative this week.

The first of three (or four) things today is a bar recipe I tried: White Chip Lemon Streusel Bars. It's from a cookbook I have called Cookies, Bars and Muffins, which features lots of - you guessed it - cookies, bars and muffins.

Ingredients:

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 cups (1 package) white chocolate chips
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups regular rolled or quick-cooking oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon shortening

Group photo:

Now, before I start I must say this was an involved recipe. One thing I disliked about it was having to set aside this much of this and that much of that and it confused me. I wasted some flour and oats and an egg because I missed a step. But that was probably my fault for not understanding it going in and not reading it properly. Anyway, first thing you do is zest a lemon, squeeze out 1/2 cup lemon juice and pour the sweetened condensed milk into a bowl. Well, it doesn't really pour, it kind of sticks and oozes if you're lucky. I whisked it together and got most of the juice and milk to mix.

First, you have to set aside 1/4 cup and 1/3 cup of the white chips, and then the remainder (what's left in the bag) you dump in with this mixture.

Mix the butter and sugar until well blended. Stir together oats, flour, baking powder, salt and add to butter mixture (the step I missed! Grr). Then, you have to set aside 1 2/3 cups of the mixture. Add egg to what's left in the bowl, blend until crumbly. Then, you press that onto the bottom of a greased 13-by-9 inch pan like so:

Then, you layer. First comes the lemon/chips mixture:
Then, you add the 1/3 cup of chips to the reserved oats mixture, stir it up a bit and then sprinkle on top of the lemon mixture:

Pop it in a preheated 350-degree oven for 20-25 minutes (it took me the full 25).

Put the 1/4 cup of chocolate chips and the shortening in the microwave and melt them. It took me about a minute and 10 seconds. I have that down because of some biscotti I make; I drizzle them with melted white chocolate chips and that's about as long as it takes. Then, mix it and drizzled over the top:

It didn't come out perfect but it looks okay. I made it for a baby shower my wife helped organize and she said it went over well. I had a bit afterward and was surprised how lemony it tasted. I figured the lemon flavor would be overpowered by everything else but it wasn't. It was pretty rich, very flavorful and if you like white chocolate and lemons, this would be a good recipe to make.