Turn Your Favorite Amaretto Cocktail Into a Boozy Holiday Dessert Your Guests Will Never Forget

Why It Works

Pouring melted butter over the dry substances evenly coats the flour particles with fats, leading to buttery, tender shortbread that melts in your mouth. Topping the bars with an Italian meringue—which entails pouring a scorching sugar syrup into whipping egg whites—cooks the whites, leading to a secure meringue that’s unlikely to weep because the bars sit.

I had my first amaretto bitter eight years in the past, when my husband, who I used to be courting on the time, shook up the cocktail for me. Made with recent lemon juice, amaretto, bourbon, easy syrup, and an egg white—all shaken with ice till chilly and frothy—the drink was brilliant, fruity, and pleasantly bitter. It was a pleasant distinction to the rum and Coke, my go-to drink on the time. The egg-white foam sat on high of the beverage, forming a distinctly fluffy layer on high, and an Amarena cherry left a wealthy, syrupy path in the direction of the underside of the glass. The drink jogged my memory of my favourite lemon bars: punchy sufficient to make you pucker, with simply sufficient sugar to stability its tartness.

With the vacation season upon us, I made a decision it was lastly time to make use of my favourite drink as a blueprint for a enjoyable new addition to my common roster of cookies. Cue the amaretto bitter lemon bar: a pointy amaretto-spiked lemon curd baked atop buttery shortbread topped with swoops of pillowy Italian meringue and an Amarena cherry.

Critical Eats / Vy Tran

4 Key Strategies for the Greatest Amaretto Bitter Lemon Bars

Use melted butter for a neater, quicker shortbread base. Whereas most lemon bars use a chilly butter shortbread as their base, these doughs are sometimes fussy to deal with or require important chilling time. As Genevieve does in her shortbread, I additionally selected to make use of melted butter as a substitute of chilly butter to make my shortbread base, a a lot simpler methodology that produces equally scrumptious outcomes. The melted butter coats the flour particles with fats, which minimizes gluten growth and retains the cookie crust tender.

Use additional yolks and cook dinner the curd to a barely increased temperature than regular for a wealthy, secure curd. Along with three complete eggs, I exploit three egg yolks, which give the curd further richness and taste. (The egg whites get used within the meringue, so they do not go to waste.) It is important to cook dinner the curd correctly: It could be tempting to cease cooking the curd round 150ºF (66ºC), which is when it begins to thicken, however for a custard that units right into a sliceable texture, I like to recommend taking the curd to a barely increased temperature of 170ºF (77ºC), which is in keeping with what former Critical Eats editor Stella recommends in her recipe for sunny lemon bars. As soon as the curd hits that temperature, I pressure the combination by a fine-mesh sieve for a silky-smooth filling.

Use an Italian meringue for essentially the most secure topping. The ultimate layer is an Italian meringue. Whereas it is identified to be the fussiest amongst Swiss, Italian, and French meringues, it is also essentially the most secure. Pouring a scorching sugar syrup into the whipping egg whites cooks them, stopping the meringue from weeping because the bars sit, and in addition producing a foam that’s sturdy sufficient to resist the load of the Amarena cherries. Although it isn’t vital, I like to recommend frivolously toasting the meringue—both with a kitchen torch or beneath the broiler—which turns the bars into an impressive wanting dessert harking back to lemon meringue pie. (As a result of it’s troublesome to whip a small quantity of egg whites, this recipe produces extra meringue than you’ll want: Use it to high one other pie, tart, or bar, or unfold it out onto a foil-lined baking sheet, then frivolously cross a kitchen torch over it for a marshmallow-y deal with.)

Attain for Amarena cherries. I like to recommend utilizing wealthy burgundy Amarena cherries. Not like Maraschino cherries, Amarena cherries have nuanced candy and bitter notes and are agency and juicy, making them a pleasure to chew into. Positioned on every bar, they’re the literal cherry on high.

Critical Eats / Vy Tran

Flip Your Favourite Amaretto Cocktail Right into a Boozy Vacation Dessert Your Visitors Will By no means Neglect

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160g all-purpose flour (about 5 1/2 ounces; 1 1/4 cups)

50g granulated sugar (1 3/4 ounces; 1/4 cup)

1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for desk salt, use half as a lot by quantity

140g unsalted butter (5 ounces; 10 tablespoons), melted

275g granulated sugar (9 3/4 ounces; about 1 1/3 cups)

1/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt; for desk salt, use half as a lot by quantity

3 massive eggs

3 massive egg yolks, whites reserved

2/3 cup (160ml) recent lemon juice from 5 medium lemons

1/4 cup (50g) amaretto liqueur (see notes)

For the Meringue:

150g granulated sugar (5 1/4 ounces; 3/4 cup)

1/3 cup (80ml) water

3 massive egg whites (from above)

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

To Garnish:

For the Crust: Modify oven rack to center place and preheat to 350°F (175°C). Line an 8- by 8-inch aluminum baking pan with two 8-inch vast strips of parchment lengthy sufficient to overhang pan’s edges by 2 inches; put aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk flour, sugar, and salt to mix. Pour melted butter into flour combination and, utilizing a rubber spatula or dough scraper, incorporate butter into dry substances, gently stirring and urgent to mix, till a cohesive dough simply varieties and no dry bits stay, about 1 minute. (Watch out to not overwork the dough.)