This nectarine lemon bars recipe is the perfect way to use everyone’s favorite late summer fruit! If you’re looking for an incredible nectarine dessert recipe, this is the one. The texture and flavor of the nectarines are enhanced by the lemon, and in bar form, they’re great for a crowd (or keep them to yourself!).
This is a tough call and I’ll likely change my mind several times in my life, but I think nectarines are my favorite fruit. They’re better than peaches because they’re not fuzzy. Sorry peaches. And, as you may or may not know, I am allergic to a lot of fruits, like watermelons and cantaloupe, and nectarines are just fine. I live a sad life, being deprived of things like melons.
Fiancé is a lemon bar fiend. They are tied with pumpkin pie in the battle for his sweet tooth. Since I bought a giant bag of nectarines and came home to realize my eyes were bigger than my stomach and he’d been begging for lemon bars, these were born. Any leftover nectarines were reserved for a weekend batch of rosemary nectarine whiskey sours!
And they are oh so good.
To make sure they didn’t interrupt the perfect texture of lemon bars, I caramelized and softened them in a little bit of melted butter. Because butter needed to sneak its way into these treats as many times as possible.
Start with the crust, which is simply flour, powdered sugar, and butter. There’s that butter again.
While the crust is baking, slice up the nectarines nice and thin and toss ’em with a little sugar.
Then add them to melted butter in a frying pan over medium heat.
Once they’re a little soft and the outsides have little golden brown spots, remove the nectarines from heat.
Whip up the batter eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and a little flour. I should have whisked a little longer, but it’s fine. You’ll do better than me.
Pour the batter right over the hot crust, then arrange the nectarines in the batter. They’ll float and make it easy for you to make them pretty.
Pop ’em back in the oven and let them cook until the center is no longer jiggly. It’s an exact science, clearly.
Then, just because this dessert is cruel, refrigerate them for a few hours, as long as you can stand.
Make a full batch and eat the whole thing. For my sake.
Get the Recipe:
Lemon Bars with Caramelized Nectarines
Ingredients
Crust:
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 2/3 cups powdered sugar
- 3/4 cup butter, cold and cubed
Batter:
- 4 nectarines, cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tbsp butter
- 6 eggs, ideally room temperature
- 1 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup lemon juice, ideally room temperature
- 1/3 cup flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease a 9×13 inch glass baking dish.
- To make the crust, whisk together the flour and powdered sugar. Cut in the cold, cubed butter with a pastry cutter, the whisk attachment on your KitchenAid, or crumble with your fingers. Press into the bottom of the glass baking dish. Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.
- While the crust is baking, toss the nectarines with the 1 tbsp of sugar. Melt the 1 tbsp of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the nectarines and toss them around to coat. Let them cook in a single layer for about 3-5 minutes, or until golden spots appear. Flip and let cook for another 3 minutes, until slightly golden. Set aside.
- Whisk together the eggs, sugar, and lemon juice. Add the flour a little at a time and whisk until no longer clumpy.
- Pour the batter over the hot, prepared crust. Arrange the nectarine slices in the batter. Bake for an additional 20-25 minutes, or until center is no longer jiggly.
- Refrigerate for at least two hours, or until chilled. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve!
Made this when we got a lot of extra nectarines – the flavor combination was really nice! It came out looking just like the recipe one the blog.
So glad to hear that!!
I plan on making this for our first post-pandemic family reunion next week. Looks scrumptious! But your nutritional information can’t be right? Almost 5,000 celeries per serving?
Whoops, you’re correct! That would be for the WHOLE recipe. We just switched nutritional panels and there have been a few glitches 🙂 thanks for the catch!
OMG!! Literally the best lemon bars I’ve ever had!!! The taste of sweet caramelized nectarines enveloped by the zingy lemon is a heavenly experience. Even my family said I need to make these for everyone I know and love! Thank you for a recipe I will now be making and sharing on repeat 🙏❤️✨
This is the sweetest!! I’m so glad you liked these. One of my favorite summer recipes!
These are INCREDIBLE! I just made them tonight for a friend and couldn’t resist sampling the batch several times. I plan on making these as gifts for a few neighbors and then I’ll have to make myself a batch. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe!
Every component was delicious (lemon part, fruit and crust) and easy to follow/execute steps! Definitely will make again. The only part I could not replicate was how to slice the nectarines so nicely and therefore arrange them in a pleasing way.
Do you eat the bars ,chilled or room temperature ?
Either one!
How do you think they’d work with plums? This looks so delicious!
This would be amazing with plums!
I’ve made these twice already (and many more times to come), and omg they’re the yummiest thing ever! Thanks so much for sharing this delicious recipe!!
Oh I’m so glad!!!
Are these freezable? If so, how do you suggest doing it?
I haven’t tested it myself, but I would cut into bars, wrap in plastic wrap, then put in a freezer safe bag.
Rebecca, did you try this? I have the same question.
Should these be stored in the refridgerator?
Yes! I like them best cold.
Looks delicious! Can I freeze these?
I haven’t tested it myself, but I would cut into bars, wrap in plastic wrap, then put in a freezer safe bag.
Another question that I don’t know was answered or not, must I use a glass pan?
I would recommend glass or ceramic!
I was really worried about this when it came out, as it looked like omelette with some nectarine slices!! But then I dusted with icing sugar (powdered sugar), and tasted it, and it is like a taste of sunshine. Perfect on an overcast, rainy January day in London – I close my eyes and pretend I’m somewhere else!!
The video attached shows three eggs but the recipe calls for six? Hoping it’s six!
Yes, I just made a half batch for the video!
Ahh understood, appreciate the clarification. The recipe was a big hit! Thanks 🙂
So sitting at home with a box of nectarines that I got at Costco and there were six of them and they were getting soft so I decided let’s look for recipes I found this recipe I didn’t have any sugar so I use Stevia instead lesser amounts when it came to the lemon juice I had three good lemons but then I added Orange Cara and limes to make up the cup of juice. I hope they came out good.
This didn’t work for me at all 🙁 the base stuck to the baking dish and was too hard to cut through. I must have made a mistake in the quantities of butter or flour but I am not sur how…
Have you ever used frozen nectarines? I’ve a bag in my freezer all in halves.
Have a ton of nectarines that I got half price at the end of the farmers market and I always love a good lemon bar. Can’t wait to make these! Going to use gluten free flour. I’ll let you know how they turn out.
How did the gluten free flour turn out?
This is so so good. I have to freeze some of it or I’ll eat the whole thing in a weekend. I discovered the ‘nectarines’ I had were actually white peaches with very little fuzz, oops, but they work great. Fresh lemons and good organic butter are so worth it.
Delicious! Forgiving recipe, too. Let’s take a tour of how I didn’t follow the recipe/improvised, YET IT WAS STILL DELICIOUS.
I had a smaller baking pan, so the crust was thicker than it should have been. ALSO, for some reason I thought I had to press the crust up onto the sides. This is not the case, only press the crust onto the bottom. I’m bad at following directions, so I thought the crust dough needed to be more malleable, so I added more butter to make it wetter (so I could pull it up the sides.) This was pointless. The crust I made on the side of the pan melted down into the crust on the bottom of the pan (the side crust bits were a deeper brown, but it didn’t burn and was fine in the end.) After all this…STILL, it was delicious.
ALSO, I used peaches instead of nectarines. They felt ripe, but they weren’t very sweet or flavorful. I probably added more sugar, and I definitely added more butter, because I wanted to cook them down more since they weren’t very ripe or flavorful. This made them shrink so they weren’t as pretty in the picture. But in the end,
I could actually taste the flavor of the peaches, likely because they had been cooked down in sugar, so….STILL, it was delicious.
My lemon filling felt too liquidy (in my mind) for putting the fruit on top without sinking, so I par-baked it for about 10-15 before I put the fruit on top. This worked well (though I have no idea if I actually needed to do it in the first place.) I drained off lots of the butter, since I added extra. STILL, it was delicious.
And I read that one cup of lemon juice was about 5 lemons. This was false in my case. I even had extra lemons (and I use a good squeezer), but I still came up short. So I used one little old lime and used the juice of a grapefruit to fill up the difference. I was worried if it would affect the taste. NOPE. STILL, it was delicious.
The crust is buttery and tender, the fruit on top adds a lovely almost floral contrast, and the filling is nice and tart (I prefer a strong lemony bite when it comes to lemon bars, like a nice little zing to offset the sugar and butter.) These are wonderful and, even after I biffed a bunch of things, they still came out great. Make them!
I had a box of nectarines and found this recipe. I took some to a dinner party and they said it was “restaurant quality”. I think it’s better than that! Homemade is always better and the nectarines cut the acidity of the lemon, while the crust is delicious! I just made a new batch and will share it tomorrow with friends! They are amazing and I serve a small piece in a cupcake liner. Makes them easier to serve to a crowd! I will always make these when I want to impress! Thanks for the recipe!
I’m so glad to hear this, Cheryl!
Hi Chelsea for the crust you say use 11/2 cups of flour, what sort of flour please I am in England. Thanks
All purpose flour
Thanks Chelsea I think over here that is plain flour so most helpful
If I only have a metal 9×13 baking pan, will that still work? I have a weird 8×13 ceramic, should I just use that?
I’d go with ceramic! I haven’t tested metal, ceramic would be closer to glass. Either would probably be fine, just can’t say for certain!
I meant to say 8×12!
Sounds delicious, and I love lemon bars. I have a friend that loves lemon bars also and peaches. I’m going to surprise him this recipe. Wish me luck on my first time working with nectarines. I’ll let you know how they turn out. Thanks
Lots of compliments the first time making them!
I reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup and plan to reduce by 1/2 cup next time I make them.
I cut them into smaller portions of 30 as finger food
The recipe looks absolutely delicious! Please…How would the number of nectarines translate into a number of cups?
I just inherited quite a few, various conditions. I cleaned the best, cut them into small slices and froze them.
I thought this was delicious but far to sweet for mine and my husband’s taste (normally have sugar free baking). What would be the best way to degrees the sweetness? Thinking best to degrees the sugar content in the lemon filling