3-Ingredient Lemon Crumble Bars

Name: 3-Ingredient Lemon Crumble Bars
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 12
Ingredients: 1 box yellow cake mix; 1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup) (softened to room temperature); 1 can lemon pie filling

February 20, 2013 by Brandie @ The Country Cook 64 Comments

You never know where a recipe will take you. I love the story of how this particular recipe plopped into my lap. While hanging out on facebook, answering some questions, I got a question from a reader named Toni (hi Toni!). She had a couple of cans of lemon pie filling in her pantry and she wanted some ideas on how to use them up. I suggested a recipe I had on the site here called Lemon Dream Cake. But I also decided to ask folks on facebook if they had any recipe suggestions. Well, someone did! Sandi G. (Hi Sandi!), shared a crazy-easy recipe to use up a can of lemon pie filling. And I fell in love with the idea of it because it only had 3 ingredients! Yep, only three. And because it’s lemon and I just cannot resist anything lemon. It sings to me.

And because it’s yellow. I love yellow.Yellow makes me happy. It is sunshine wrapped up in a color. Maybe that’s why I love lemon flavors so much. It makes me happy before I even put it in my mouth. And I’ve been writing recipes long enough to know that low-ingredient recipes can be deceiving. At first you think, “How can that be good with just that little bit in there?” But you go on and make it, hoping it will prove you wrong. And then it does. And it turns out amazing (usually.) Well folks, that is what this recipe will do. It will surprise you in it’s simplicity and flavor. Don’t try to make it more complicated. It really is only just 3 ingredients. So thank you Toni for asking that question and thank you to Sandi for sharing her recipe with the rest of us. Here it is…don’t blink, you might miss it.

Ingredients:
1 box yellow cake mix

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter (softened to room temperature)

1 can lemon pie filling

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Spray 9×13 baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, y’all know I’m a big fan of these nonstick sprays that have flour in it. It is so awesome for baking.

In a bowl, combine softened butter with dry cake mix.

Mix until crumbly. Now at this point, you might think to yourself, this stuff is so crumbly, how is it going to pack into the baking dish and make a crust? Well, I thought the same thing. But it all pushes together nicely and bakes up so well. Just make sure you are using real butter for this, I’m not so sure margarine would hold up in this recipe. But if anyone tries it, let me know.

Before you go any further, you’ll need to set aside 1/2 cup of this crumbly mixture.

Take the rest of the crust mixture and press it into a 9×13 baking dish. Spread it out evenly and then just go around and pack it down in there with your hands.

Spoon lemon pie filling onto crust.

Do your best to spread it out as evenly as possible.

Then take the 1/2 cup of crust mixture that you set aside earlier and sprinkle all over lemon pie filling.

This is going to give you a nice little crumble topping.

Bake at 350F for about 20-25 minutes. The crumble on top will just start to turn a very light golden brown. Then slice up and serve. This crust slices up very nicely. I like to eat it while it is still a little warm but it was really good nice and cold from being stored in the refrigerator. I bet that would be delicious during the hot summer months.

Here’s a close up so you can see the layers.

Note: This should be covered and stored in the fridge. I found if I just covered it and left it out that the crust would soften up a bit so put in the refrigerator if not eating it all the same day it’s made.

Enjoy!

5 from 3 votes