Pinterest Challenge: Two Ingredient Lemon Bars

When it comes to Pinterest, I tend to re-pin anything that looks interesting and come back to check out the source later. Often that leads to disappointment when the image doesn't always link to what I expect - or anything at all. I've got a few tricks for getting what I'm after, but sometimes I'm bound to be disappointed. Other times I'm simply surprised by where a pin leads. I had expected a blog post when I clicked this pin, but at least it led to a recipe and image on a flickr account! 

Two Ingredient Lemon Bars.

An afternoon get together sounded like the perfect occasion to whip these up for a trial run.

1 box Angel Food Cake Mix. 1 large can lemon cream pie filling. That's it - one of my guests corrected me - it's really a Three Ingredient bar if you count the powdered sugar.

Mixing the two ingredients together was a little tricky. The two consistences didn't lend well to combining, and the angel food cake mix seemed quite determined to escape the bowl and cover my counter top and arms. But after a little bit of careful effort I wound up with a butter colored, very tangy mixture. 

I wasn't too careful pouring it into a greased pan - because I wanted an excuse to lick the spatula while I waited for it to bake! 

I pulled it out of the oven about 27 minutes later. The top was still far from browning, but the sides were beginning to show little bits of brown (the single spot of dark brown is a bit of chocolate that went awry, whoops!). I let it cook for a while in the pan (elevated on a rack) before trying to transfer it to anything else. I'd planned to move it directly to another cooling rack, but the moist cake seemed too likely to fall through the wire - so I used this cookie sheet instead. I lack any kind of powdered sugar dispenser, so the application of sugar was a bit rough - but that didn't change the taste!

Ignore the less that ideal photo there.

My husband liked the better the second day, when they were even more moist and the powdered sugar was a bit more absorbed by the cake. He claims not to like citrus much, but he was quite happy with these.

My brother rejected it upon a single bite. He'd hoped it was more like traditional lemon bars and wasn't interested in trying something new.

Our friend gave the first piece 'so-so' rating, but had several more upon discovering how well they went with strawberry ice cream.

Meanwhile, I had more pieces than the others put together - well, maybe not quite.

The ease and relative inexpensiveness of the dessert would lend this to being a great bring-along dessert. That said, the cake was so moist, it might be difficult to serve and share if you're particular about presentation. If you're more the 'eat out of the pan with a spoon' type and looking for something other than chocolate, this would be ideal.