It's the Yeast I Can Do

Ginger lemon bars, 08.03.12

I’ve been dreaming of making these bars since I had them in a Central Market cooking class a year and change ago. They include two types of ginger — ground and crystallized, or candied — and I’d been halfheartedly checking spice aisles for the latter any time I found myself in a lemon mood. Finally, this weekend, the stars aligned: I’m heading out to The Farm, where I’ve never had a less-than-spectacular meal in my life, and Roz asked me to make a dessert, and one of my bosses at work explained that I only had to look as far as the bulk bins to find that elusive candied ginger. Thus, ginger lemon bars. (Yes, you usually hear those words in the opposite order, but I take a cue from Crayola’s red orange vs. orange red debate and put the more prominent flavor first. Seriously, it’ll clear sinuses.)

From Nick Malgieri’s Bake!, which was the first book I ever reviewed for the Chronicle conveniently located on Serious Eats in web form