Grapefruit, love child of an orange/pomelo hookup, flaunts one parent’s sunny nature and the other’s thick skinned, rotund ways. The hybrid is all sunny bright, easy-peel, sweet and sour cheer. That’s how it rolls.

And yet, I contrived to press grapefruit flat, to square it off into lemon-bar portability.

I squeezed and mixed and baked. Yielding something sweet, soured by a whiff of fruitcake. In another word: bad.

After many yellow squares and many square yellow leftovers, I was visited by a revelation. Fresh grapefruit: good. Cooked grapefruit: bad.

So I reformatted my bars, confining grapefruit to a fresh zest finish. It worked. The bars sliced up lemon bold, grapefruit fresh, sunshine sweet. Score another for hybrid vigor.

Sunshine Bars

3 cups granulated sugar

Finely grated zest of 3 grapefruits

2 cups all-purpose flour, divided use

Pinch salt

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut up

1 cup PLUS 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, strained (from about 8 lemons)

6 eggs

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine sugar and grapefruit zest in a food processor. Buzz to a fine grapefruit-scented powder, about 1 minute. Scoop ¼ cup scented sugar into a small bowl; set aside. Scoop 2 ¼ cups scented sugar into a large mixing bowl; set aside.

Measure 1 ½ cups flour and the salt into the remaining ½ cup scented sugar in the food processor. Buzz to combine.

Drop in butter. Pulse. Mixture looks like fine sand, then coarse sand, then big clumps.

Press mixture into the bottom of a 13-by-9-inch baking pan. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk the remaining ½ cup flour into the scented sugar in the large mixing bowl. Whisk in juice.

Whisk in eggs.

When pastry is golden, reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees. Pour egg mixture over pastry and bake until center is just set, about 30 minutes.

Spread remaining ¼ cup scented sugar over the top.

Cool. Chill. Cut into bars.

Food, Pages 38 on 04/23/2014