Super delicious, super addictive and super sweet!  These bars are absolutely amazing and are perfect for the sweet tooth in your family and doubly perfect if that person likes lemon.

I wish I could say that I used the lemons from our lemon tree to make this (and so does Mr. E in order to justify the trees existence), but our citrus trees (we have four of them – all different) can’t decide from year to year if they want to produce fruit and how much.  So, I usually end up waiting till lemons are a good price and then make a couple of batches to share with friends and co-workers.  You’d think living in AZ that lemons would always be a good price and they’d be giving them away, but not so much…

Technically you should let it cool a bit before cutting into bars and eating because it’s so hot – think molten lava hot, however, Mr.  E is not one to follow the rules and so he dug in with a spoon as soon as they were out of the oven…  I knew it must be pretty good because after he hopped a bit from one foot to the other with his mouth open trying to fan (cool off) the lemon lava in his mouth.  He looked at me and said “totally worth it” and took another spoonful.  I don’t know when I’m going to start taking his advice on matters like this because the only thing better than lemon gooey bars is a spoonful of hot lemon gooey pudding mess.

Gooey Lemon Bars

Crust:

1 yellow cake mix – pudding in the mix

½ cup butter, melted

1 egg

 

Filling:

¼ cup lemon juice

2 eggs

8 oz. of cream cheese, at room temperature

3 tablespoon butter, melted

3 ½ cup powdered sugar

1 to 1 ½ teaspoon lemon zest

 

Preheat oven to 350.

 

Crust:  In a medium bowl mix dry cake, melted butter and egg.  Mix well; the mixture will be thick.  Grease the bottom and sides of a 9×13 pan and press the mixture into the pan.  Set aside.

 

Filling: In a separate bowl, I used my electric mixer, beat cream cheese well until smooth.  Add eggs and melted butter and mix well until the eggs and butter are fully incorporated.  Add lemon juice and mix well.  At this point there may be some lumps; mix at a high speed to try and get most of the lumps out but it’s okay if you don’t get all of them.

 

Add the powder sugar 1 cup at a time and mix well after each addition.  Once all the powder sugar has been added, add the lemon zest and mix.

 

Pour the filling over the crust and bake for approximately 45 minutes or until the center just barely jiggles when shaken.  The edges, and even the center, will be a medium golden brown.

 

Remove from oven, let cool and cut into bars.  Cover and store in fridge.

 

Enjoy!