This easy Lemon Squares Recipe comes together in minutes. When you are craving a fresh and vibrant dessert my healthy lemon bars will be a perfect fix.
Lemon Squares Recipe – aka Healthy Lemon Bars – Low Carb, Keto, Grain-Free, Gluten-Free, THM S
I love when readers send me recipes to test. Last month I received this dough recipe from John in my email and I was intrigued by the use of milk powder. I gave it a try subbing in the heavy cream powder I had in my cupboard. It was a great dough! Very easy to work with and easier to make than a fathead type dough. It reminded me of the cream cheese dough I use in my pecan cup cookies.
Add in my current craving for light and refreshing spring flavors and this recipe for lemon squares was born. I served these to friends a couple of days after making them and everyone loved them.
How to Make Crust for Lemon Bars
This cream cheese based crust mixes up in no time. Just add the ingredients to your stand mixer and turn it on. If you don’t have a stand mixer you can mix this by hand or with an electric mixer.
This dough is unique in its use of heavy cream powder or whole milk powder. This makes the crust softer and enhances the flavor. If you’d prefer a crust without heavy cream powder try my Easy Low Carb Pie Crust or the crust in my Pecan Cup Cookies recipe.
Ingredients in Lemon Squares Crust:
- Almond Flour – I’ve really come to prefer almond flour in baked goods. It gives a tender crumb in cakes, cookies, and biscuits.
- Heavy Cream Powder
- Coconut Flour – Just a little bit of coconut flour goes a long way. Coconut flour helps to balance the oiliness of almond flour since it is naturally drier and absorbs more liquid than other alternative flours.
- Sugar-Free Sweetener – I like to use a blend of xylitol, erythritol, and stevia in my recipes. You can purchase this pre-mixed from the Trim Healthy Mama website or mix your own according to my recipe. By using a combination of sugar alcohols and stevia you can use half the amount required of regular sugar. Since these sweeteners can be more expensive this helps with my food budget.
- Cream Cheese
- Eggs
How to Make Filling for Lemon Squares
The filling for my lemon squares recipe is made easily either by hand or in your stand mixer. You just want to mix the ingredients until they are smooth. As long as you are using softened cream cheese and melted butter the filling comes together quickly.
Ingredients in Healthy Lemon Bars Filling:
- Sugar-Free Sweetener
- Butter
- Heavy Cream
- Eggs
- Cream Cheese
- Lemon Juice
Can I use bottled lemon juice for lemon squares?
I don’t remember using bottled lemon juice for a dessert when lemon is the star flavor. The flavor just isn’t as vibrant and squeezing fresh lemons.
I love cookies but a lot of the time it’s easier to just press a batter into an 8×8 baking dish. I default to bars and brownies over scooping individual cookies quite often. Here are some of my favorite bar recipes.
Keto Dessert Bar Recipes:
Keto Chocolate Cake Bars with Cheesecake Swirl
Peppermint Cookies and Cream Bars
Tagalong Peanut Butter Cookie Bars
White Chocolate Peanut Butter Blondies
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Ingredients
- 3 oz cream cheese softened
- 1 1/4 cup almond flour
- 1/4 cup heavy cream powder (or whole milk powder)
- 2 tbsp coconut flour
- 1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp Trim Healthy Mama Gentle Sweet or my sweetener
- 1/4 tsp salt
Filling:
- 1 cup Trim Healthy Mama Gentle Sweet or my sweetener, finely ground
- 6 tbsp butter softened
- 1/4 cup cream light or heavy
- 3 eggs
- 2 oz cream cheese softened
- 3 tbsp lemon juice
- zest of one lemon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8x8 baking pan lined with parchment paper.
- Beat softened cream cheese with paddle attachment in a stand mixer, scrape the bowl and then add the remaining ingredients.
- Add remaining ingredients into the mixer and mix all together. Mix until mixture leaves sides of the bowl. It is a very soft and delicate dough.
- Press into the bottom of the 8x8 baking dish. Bake the crust for 10 minutes.
- Mix together the ingredients for the filling in the stand mixer until smooth. Pour over the pre-baked crust.
- Bake for 30-35 min or until the filling no longer jiggles if the pan is gently shaken. Cool completely. Gently lift the parchment paper to remove the bars from the pan. Cut into 12 pieces. Sprinkle with powdered sweetener right before serving if desired.
Notes
To sub in Swerve use 1.5 to 2 times the amount of sweetener called for.
Elizabeth Gregory says
Have read all the comments but didn’t find an answer as to exactly how many portions this recipe is for. One place it says serves 12 and then the directions say to cut into 16 squares. Please clarify for me which it is as I follow a KETO woe. Thanks so much in advance for your reply Taryn!
Taryn says
Good catch! The nutrition facts are for 12 servings. I’ll edit the recipe later so they match.
LINDA DALZIEL says
Can these be frozen
Taryn says
Yes. Enjoy!
TERRI LITTLE says
I Made these for my Daughter’s birthday, (lemon bars have always been her favorite) THEY ARE DELICIOUS!!! I made them exactly as the recipe reads. I wouldn’t change a thing! Thank you!
Mary Speedie says
I have a friend who is allergic to all nuts. I am wondering if there is any recipe for a crust that does not use almond flour. I would like to make this to take to a church function so that I can have something desert like. If it has nuts like almond flour I would not be able to bring this recipe. I love lemon bars and I have been doing Keto since January this year.
Taryn says
You can sub in sunflower seed flour for the almond flour.
Lin says
Hi! I’m struggling with carb counting here. This looks amazing but my fitness pal says the low carb sugar alone is 16 grams of carbs per serving. How are you calculating your nutrients? Thanks so much!! Eager to try these!
Taryn says
MFP is not subtracting the sugar alcohols. I subtract those manually.
Jeri says
I made these for Easter and they were amazing! I could not find whole milk powder so just used regular non fat milk powder since it was only 1/4c for the whole recipe. The lemon part was delicious… but the crust on this was DEFINITELY the star of the show. The texture is AMAZING! This is the first time I’ve had something with a THM crust that I enjoyed! Do you think I could use it for pies too? Seriously amazing!
Taryn says
Yes. The crust recipe came from my reader, John, and he said he uses it for mini tarts. It should work for pie too! Maybe not a wet fruit pie but definitely for a pudding pie, pumpkin pie, etc.
Jessica says
Hi! First of all, I would like to thank you for sharing all your wonderful recipes. I love trying them. I was really excited about this one because I LOVE lemon desserts. I have a couple questions because mine turned out less than perfect (it never set up, even with like 30 extra minutes of baking time). 1. My sweetener kept settling to the bottom of the filling mixture. Could this have had something to do with mine never setting up? 2. I only have a glass 8X8. I noticed while baking the crust that it did require about 5 minutes of extra baking time. Could that have had something to do with it? 3. Next, I am pretty sure (but not totally sure) this is the reason it didn’t set up. I tasted the filling and felt that the two TB of lemon juice was not enough. All I had was bottled left so I used that to add more. Do you think that is why mine didn’t set up? And finally, 5. What recommendations do you have for me to make this recipe so that’s it’s more lemony and also sets up?
Taryn says
Hi Jessica, yes I think that adding additional lemon juice was why your lemon bars didn’t set. I would have suggested adding an extra egg to balance out the addition of more liquid. Did you chill it yet? It will firm up further in the fridge.
Jessica says
Hi Taryn,
Thanks for your reply. So don’t laugh. The consistency of the filling even after if cooled quite a bit was like canned, condensed tomato soup. I didn’t think even refrigerating it would get it much thicker. So, I poured it out of the crust, put unflavored gelatin in it, and put it back in the crust. Don’t get me wrong. They had great flavor, and I love the crust. They just didn’t turn out like yours. I am thinking about just adding the zest of the lemon next time, or will that not work? What are your thoughts about my glass 8X8 and the sweetener not dissolving? Should I invest in a metal 8X8? The sweetener I used was a monk fruit and xylitol blend that is like your recipe for gentle sweet before you powder it in the food processor. Should I have used powdered or should that have made a difference?
Thanks so much!
Taryn says
I’m going to do a little more recipe testing with this recipe this afternoon. I think lemon zest would be good. And I think powdered sweetener should help too.
Did you double the amount of sweetener for the monk fruit blend?
Taryn says
I made a couple of slight tweaks to the recipe based on your suggestions and my recipe testing. I think it’s perfect now. If you try it again let me know 🙂
Jessica says
I did not double the monk fruit sweetener, and they were plenty sweet.
Jessica says
Ok! That is awesome of you! I will let you know the next time I make these which will hopefully be soon!
Jennifer Farley says
Delicious and simple! Love it!
Suzy says
I love anything lemon flavored and these lived up to my expectations!
Heather says
Is there a substitute to use for the heavy cream powder? Is there a ratio of using just heavy cream?
Taryn says
There is a section in the blog post titled “How to Make Crust for Lemon Bars” that talks about this. Regular cream would make it too wet. You can just sub in another dough. A couple are linked above.