Upside-down Lime and Coconut Bars

Has a song ever inspired you to bake? While debating with myself what to bake for my next post for Girl Meets Oven, the song “Coconut” suddenly popped into my head. If you are not familiar with it, the chorus goes, “She put the lime in the coconut; she drank ’em both up.” Then I thought instead of drinking lime and coconut, why not bake with them? Lime and coconut bars could make for a tasty and fun Saint Patrick’s Day treat.

The Story

Alas, the luck of the Irish was not with me. I tried to make the bars similar to a key lime pie by adding a graham cracker and coconut crust. That was my first mistake. I have never had good luck with key lime pie. The first time I tried making one the filling never set, so the graham cracker crust ended up a terribly soggy mess. It was more like key lime soup with graham cracker mush than pie.

Before baking these lime bars, I put the graham cracker crust firmly on the bottom of the pan, poured the lime filling over it and hoped for the best.

Fortunately, this time the filling set up (sort of) and the crust did not turn out soggy. The crust actually did the weirdest thing during baking, which prevented it from getting soggy. It raised itself to the top of the pan where it was able to fully bask in the warmth of the oven. When it came out of the oven, all I saw at first was the crust.

I wondered what happened to the key lime filling. Then I looked at the bottom of my clear glass baking dish. It had sunk.

Purely by accident, I had made upside-down lime and coconut bars! Although strange looking, they tasted a lot like key lime pie.

At least my baking adventure didn’t have the exact same ending as the Coconut song. The girl in the song ended up calling the doctor because she had a belly ache. The doctor gave her good advice though.

“Put the lime in the coconut; then you feel better.”

If only she had lime and coconut bars.

I can’t get this song out of my head now.

The Moral of the Story

Look for the bright side when a recipe doesn’t turn out as you originally expect. At first glance I thought the lime bars were an epic fail, until I cut them out of the pan and turned them upside down. Turns out by looking at it a different way, I flipped my flop into a new recipe. They may have looked a little strange, but they tasted great.

About the Recipe

For the “filling” part of the recipe, I blended elements from two different recipes. Pat and Gina Neely from Food Network have a recipe called Neely’s Lime Bars, which had the lime I was looking for. The Better Homes and Garden’s New Cook Book has a recipe for basic lemon bars, which I had made before with success.

For the “crust” part, I made a graham cracker and coconut crust. I started with a graham cracker crust recipe that I have used for ages, which I found originally with a cream cheese recipe on a box of Philadelphia cream cheese. I simply reduced the graham cracker portion of the recipe a bit and added shredded coconut.

The Cast of Characters

Lime and coconut were supposed to be the star ingredients, but it was the graham crackers that end up stealing the show.

The Play by Play

Before you begin, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then begin making the graham cracker and coconut crust.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Once it is melted, let it cool while you continue making the crust.

In a food processor, place your graham crackers.

Grind the crackers into fine crumbs.

Now add the coconut to the food processor.

Pulse the processor a few more times to coarsely grind the coconut.

Add the brown and white sugar to the ground graham cracker and coconut.

Transfer the crumb mixture to a large bowl, and add the melted butter. Stir until the crumbs are moistened.

Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of an ungreased 9×13 baking dish.

Bake the crust in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Let the crust cool on a wire rack while you prepare the lime filling.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs.

Whisk the sugar into the eggs.

Whisk in the flour into the sugar and eggs.

Now zest a lime.

Then juice the lime.

Add the lime zest and juice to the egg, sugar and flour mixture.

Add the milk.

If you want your lime bars to be green, add a few drops of green food coloring.

Stir in the coloring completely.

Pour the lime filling over the baked graham cracker crust.

Bake in the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes.

When the graham cracker crust has made its way to the top, remove it from the oven.

Look for your lime filling at the bottom of the pan. Hopefully, you used a clear glass baking dish so you can see it. Let the bars cool completely in the baking dish.

Once cool, cut into bars. Remove the bars from the pan and flip them over. Now your filling is on top of the crust!

If you are celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day, cut your bars into a shamrock shape.

Carefully remove the bar from the shamrock-shaped cookie cutter.

Garnish with powdered sugar.

If you are feeling especially festive, also garnish with green sugar.

Additional Resources

It looks like almost everybody is making lime bars, including Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart. Here are a few other recipes if you want to give them a whirl. However, it looks like no one else has the floating graham cracker crust trick in their recipe. As far as I can tell, you’ll only find that here on Girl Meets Oven.

• Key Lime Bars from Martha Stewart: By now you know that I am no Martha Stewart. Martha made perfect-looking key lime bars with a graham cracker crust on the bottom. Her lime filling looks heavier than mine though, with both heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk. A filling that thick should definitely keep the crust in place.
• Key Lime Bars from Betty Crocker: Betty uses coconut cookie crumbs for her crust. She also uses both cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk in her filling.
• Various Lime Bar recipes from Cooks.com: Cooks.com has multiple variations, including a lime cheesecake bar variation. They even have a lime Jello bar variation with coconut.
• Key Lime Pistachio Shortbread Bars from CD Kitchen: This one uses ground pistachios in the crust. I may have to try adding pistachios next time. Ken would love this!
• Very Tangy Lime or Lemon Bars from the Star Tribune: This one caught my eye since it comes from Iowa’s neighbor, Minnesota. This one gives you the choice to use lime or lemon.
• Lime Bars from About.com: This looks like a classic variation with a butter cookie crust.

Have you made lime bars? How did it go?