Pistachio lemon bars

Bars or slices, squares or shortbreads, however you call the simple shortcrust base with gooey topping cut into pieces for ease of handling, rather than for restraint in consuming, it’s an awesome good invention.

I must admit I’d not paid much attention to bars/slices/whatever before. Millionaires, rocky roads, bakewells and angels with icing seemed all too shop-bought, too evenly square, too boring icing on boring sponge. When I first saw a panettone (okay – possibly the sixth time) I knew I wanted to try baking it at home. Peanut butter cake bars never incited such emotion – I wouldn’t want to copycat it any more than I’d like to make boiled sweets at home. Just. Not. Appealing.

It was the pistachios that attracted me in this recipe, featured in NY Times Cooking. My occasionally visiting offspring dumped her nut allergy sufferer boyfriend and since then she keeps asking if I’m not baking anything nutty. She can’t get enough after years of abstemiousness through not keeping a single almond at home. I’m pleased to indulge her: the allergy was the only interesting feature of the boyfriend.

So now I’m converted – since, to be honest, quite a few cakes can be cut into rectangles and called ‘slices’, it opens a new world of possibilities. And the lemon topping on this one is rhapsodic. And if my inner baking snob is not happy with bars or slices I can always keep the thing whole, serve it in tranches with forks and call it a tarte.