Can I convert a lemon tart recipe into lemon bars?

I want to make Alice Medrich's gluten free lemon tart recipe, but I do not have the 9.5 in tart pan. Could I substitute a 9x13 in pan and make lemon bars?

lunalovegood
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5 Comments

Nancy
Nancy July 7, 2016
My thoughts are similar to the point Rachel makes about thinness.
Thinking the tart base was a pie crust, I worried it would be too thin to hold the base when cut into bars & picked up. Even more so when I read the recipe and saw the base is not pastry, but breadcrumbs.
A lemon bar usually has a based of cooked flour (& other things), almost a cookie, to hold up the filling for hand-eating.
Compare the one you want to make
https://food52.com/recipes/39694-mostly-aunt-aggie-s-christmas-pudding
with this classic, much loved lemon bar recipe
http://www.cbc.ca/bestrecipes/recipes/zippy-lemon-bars
And please let us know what you bake and how it turns out.
 
Nancy
Nancy July 7, 2016
Oops, writing while tired.
Assumed you meant a recipe here. But the Medrich tart I found on food52 (and linked above) is a Christmas pudding with bread crumbs (not GF).
Also the only Alice Medrich lemon tart recipe I can find on the web (from Sinfully Easy Desserts) has a traditional flour crust. It would still be thin, but might hold up slightly better than breadcrumbs. However, it is still not GF.
If GF is important to you (not just an option), you may need to find another base, and use Medrich's lemon curd (or something similar) for filling.
 
Smaug
Smaug July 6, 2016
I'm not familiar with the particular recipe, but most lemon curds are a bit on the soft and sticky side for bars; lemon bar fillings usually have a bit of flour in them.
 
Rachel
Rachel July 6, 2016
Your bars will be very thin if you use a pan that large as opposed to the tart pan. If I were you I would make the recipe 1.5 times the amount specified to put in the 9x13" pan. Or you could double it and put the excess crust/filling into a smaller pan such as a loaf pan. Either way, I think you'd have better luck doing that than making extremely thin bars and risk overcooking or burning them
 
Rachel
Rachel July 6, 2016
I'm amending what I wrote earlier. It also depends on how thin you want the bars to be. I supposed, based on your question that you wanted thinner bars. However, a 9.5x1" tart pan has a volume capacity of four cups, while a 9x13x2" pan has the volume capacity of 15 cups. If you want bars that are about a an inch tall (give or take), doubling your recipe and putting it all in the same pan would be your best bet, but if you want thinner, then reduce accordingly. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
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