Lemon Date Squares: Mrs. J.P. Allen’s Lemon Date Squares, from the 1971 Southern Living Desserts Cookbook.; Texas; seventies; 1970s; lemons; Southern Living; coconut; dates; recipe; shortbread

These are always a huge hit wherever I bring them, so thank you, Mrs. J. P. Allen of Channelview, Texas!

This kind of dessert, the shortbread with a sort of filling on top, is one of my favorite snackable desserts. Whether it’s the more traditional lemon square, or a very impressive berry delight mixed with sour cream and whipped cream, you can’t really go wrong with sweets on top of a sweet shortbread.

I love the inner pieces with the gooey filling on top, and the outer pieces with the crunchy edges. They’re all good.

Drop in again soon for another vintage recipe! I’ll have a different recipe every Sunday afternoon throughout the year. Keep an eye on this page or subscribe to the RSS feed for further details. You can also browse past featured Club recipes as well as some of the vintage promotional cookbooks I’ve used as sources. And I collect many of these recipes in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

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Better that a man should wait for his meal than the meal should wait for the man. — Benedictine Sisters of Peking (The Art of Chinese Cookery)