Lemon Lime Mini Cakes

Well, obviously I can't be trusted! I said a few days ago that I was done with citrus for a while and there I go again! I was reading one of my favorite blogs, What's the recipe today, Jim?, and there it was in plain view: a decadent looking Iced Lemon Curd Layer Cake from Delia Smith. Instead of making one cake, I poured the batter in muffin tins. I also adapted the recipe by replacing the lemon curd for lime curd. I did a simple cream cheese frosting instead of a glaze and pipe more lime curd on top. I basically only kept the main body of the recipe, the cake. It has a nice light crumb .


ICED LEMON CURD LAYER MINI CAKES, adapted from Delia Smith,
Makes 12 mini cakes

6 oz (175 g) butter at room temperature
6 oz (175 g) sugar
grated zest 1 lemon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
6 oz (175 g) self-raising flour, sifted
1 level teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs, beaten

For the lime curd:
grated zest and juice of 2 limes
3 oz (75 g) caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 oz (50 g) unsalted butter

Cream cheese frosting:
8 oz cream cheese
2 oz butter
1 cup powdered sugar
juice of 1/2 lime



Just measure all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and beat – ideally with an electric hand whisk – till you have a smooth, creamy consistency. Then divide the mixture evenly between the muffin tins and bake them on the centre shelf of the oven for about 35 min.

While the cakes are cooking, make the lemon curd.Place the sugar and grated lemon zest in a bowl, whisk the lemon juice together with the eggs, then pour this over the sugar.Then add the butter cut into little pieces, and place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently till thickened – about 20 minutes. Remove 2 Tb. to decorate.
When the cakes are cooked, remove them from the oven and after about 30 seconds turn them out on to a wire rack.When they are cold, cut a hole in the center of each mini cake, fill with lime curd and put the lid back on.

For the frosting:
Cream the cream cheese and butter, then add the powdered sugar and juice.
Frost the mini cakes with it and pour the remaining 2 Tb. of lime curd in a pastry bag fitted with a small tip, drizzle or swiggle over the frosting.

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Tiramisu Cake

This past weekend, one of our friends came in to visit after a 5 year abscence. It was great seeing him and going out around town, but it was also his birthday and I wanted to mark the occasion. I was still browsing through Dorie Greenspan's book when I noticed a recipe that really caught my eye: Tiramisu Cake. I love mascarpone and my dad loves tiramisu, so it struck me as a winner. We had decided to grill some steaks, roast potatoes and vegetables and I was afraid that it would be too heavy. On the contrary, it was light and creamy, not too rich but definetely decadent! I am amazed that everything that I have made so far has came out so light.

For the cake:
2 cups cake flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tesp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 1/4 sticks butter at room temp.
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup buttermilk

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one a time, plus yolk, beating well after each addition. Reduce the mixer speed and alternatively add the flour mixture and the buttermilk. Begin and end with the dry ingredients. Pour into 2 greased 9 inch baking pans, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

For the espresso syrup: mix together 1/2 cup water and 1/3 cup sugar in a saucepan and heat just to a boil. Remove from heat and add 1 Tb. coffee liqueur.

For the filling and frosting:
8 oz. mascarpone
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 Tb. coffee liqueur
1 cup cold heavy cream
2 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

Cream together the mascarpone, sugar vanilla and liqueur in a large mixing bowl, until smooth.
In a separate bowl, whip the heavy cream to firm peaks. With a light touch, fold the cream into the mascarpone mixture.

To assemble the cake: Remove the crowns of the cakes to make them flat (sorry Sam), place one cake on a plate and soak the layer with the espresso syrup. Smooth some of the mascarpone cream over, gently press the chopped chocolate on top of it. Top it with the other cake, pour the remaining of the espresso syrup.

For the frosting, dissolve 1 tsp. espresso powder and 1 tsp hot water and add to the remaining mascarpone and spread over the side and top of the cake.
Decorate with dusted cocoa powder if wanted.

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Alsatian Apple Tart

It's been a crazy weekend with my parents being here and a friend coming in town for his birthday, but I did manage to get a couple of desserts done. I might be an irregular poster in the coming week but I'll do my best. We are trying to pack so many activities into each day, it leaves little time for baking and blogging. I enjoy each moment I spend with the family and appreciate my own culinary background even more when I find myself making dough and peeling apples next to my mo ir making rice pilaf with my dad.

We were invited to my in-laws for dinner this weekend and as always I volunteered dessert. I still had plenty of apples left from the bag I used for Blog Party 14 and an apple cake, so the choice was obvious. As I am completely immmersed in Dorie Greenspan's book, I first looked there for an apple dessert. There are so many yummy recipes that my head started spinning, not only from the recipes but with all the options added on the sidebar. I decided upon the Alsatian Apple Tart as I wanted a creamy base. I just added a splash of Calvados (apple brandy from Normandy) to the cream and used the Sweet Dough recipe with ground walnuts.
Our meal was fairly substantial, mostly based on seafood but the tart was not diffficult for anybody to enjoy because it is light and smooth and goes down like a charm!

Here is the recipe, adapted from Dorie Greenspan:

Sweet Tart Dough with Walnuts:
In a food processor, combine 1 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 cup walnuts and 1 stick of butter, pulse until it ressembles coarse meal, add 1 egg yolk and pulse until combined into a ball. I flattened it into a disk in between sheets of plastic wrap, refrigerated it and rolled it out to cut rounds big enough to fit into my mini tart pans. The dough gets soft very fast so you can flour your fingertips to push it up and down the sides and bottom of the pan.

For the tart:
1 pound medium sized sweet apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
3/4 cup heavy cream
6 Tb. sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 Tb. Calvados

Layer the apples on the bottom of the dough. In a bowl, mix the eggs and sugar, add the cream and the liquor. Pour on top of the apples and bake at 375 for 50-55 minutes.

How easy can this be?! It was delicious!

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Lemon Meringue...One Last Time

I don't know if you are like me but I seem to have two kinds of shopping trips. There is the "quickie", as in quickly in and quickly out (depending who's in front at the cash register) to get a couple of items I may have forgotten for dinner or something. The second kind, my favorite, is the one in which I have my baking plans carefully thought with a list of ingredients necessary and where I have and take the time to perouse the aisles checking out new products, picking up, touching, smelling fruits and vegetables, talking with the fish guy or my salad guy. He calls me "papillon" because like a butterfly I go from one bin to the next but can't make up my mind on anything. It is during those longer shopping outings that I often get sucked into buying a case of fruits or other because it is a one day sale, and you probably figured by the title of today's post that this is what happened when I found myself hauling a case of lemon out to my car.
I tried to do everything possible, lemon curd, preserves, cocktails, but irreversibly found myself drawn to the citrus recipes I found in Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours.

I had a difficult time settling on one and I promised myself to try the others fairly soon,as they look and sound so tempting: Pierre Herme's Lemon Cream tart, Fresh Orange Cream Tart, Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, Florida Pie,....and the one chosen today: Tartest Lemon Tart.

I decided to make individual tarts and changed the ingredients only very slightly.

Here is the recipe, adapted from Dorie Greenspan.

2 lemons
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
2 egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue)
1 1/2 Tb. cornstarch
Sweet Tart Dough or your prefered pate sablee.

For the dough: in a food processor, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 1 stick of butter, pulse until it ressembles coarse meal, add 1 egg yolk and pulse until combined into a ball. I flattened it into a disk in between sheets of plastic wrap, refrigerated it and rolled it out to cut rounds big enough to fit into my mini tart pans. The dough gets soft very fast so you can flour your fingertips to push it up and down the sides and bottoms of the pans.You can also sub. 1/4 cup ground nuts for 1/4 cup of the flour for added flavor.

For the filling: juice the lemons and strain if necessary. Combine the egg, yolks, sugar and cornstarch, add lemon juice and pour into the tart shells. Bake at 350 for 15 - 20 minutes. Let cool completely.

For the meringue: whip the egg whites to a foam, slowly add the sugar to form a shiny meringue. Pipe on top of the baked and cooled tarts. Put under broiler for a couple of minutes or until lighlty browned.

Serve, and pucker be ready...these are tart!

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Banana Chocolate Bread Pudding

I meant to post this last night but my computer went on strike, just got it back working this afternoon.

I realized there had not been a banana post in a while and figured it was about time, now that I have been reading this book for a couple of days and found a yummy recipe. The original one is for a dark chocolate bread pudding with raisins, but with hubby having an aversion to the little critters and a never ending love for bananas, the decision to swap them quickly became a requirement. The recipe calls for stale bread but with my parents visiting there never seem to be any left around the house so I took some brioche and let it dry in the oven at 200 for 30 minutes. The resulting dessert was delicious and is only tempting me to make the original and compare.

Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding, adapted from Dorie Greenspan, Baking From My Home To Yours.

12 oz. stale bread (brioche, white, challah)
2-3 bananas,sliced
3 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
5 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 350. Butter the bottom and side of a 9x13 inch baking pan, and put it in a roasting pan. Spread the stale bread and bananas evenly on the bottom.
Heat the milk and cream to boiling point. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale. Slowly add the milk and cream to the mixture. Add the chocolate and stir until incorporated and batter is smooth. Pour on top of the bread and the bananas. Put the roasting pan in the oven and pour hot water halfway up the side of the baking pan, so you have a nice water bath (bain marie) going on. Bake 35-45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clear.

The pudding was light yet rich, consistent but not stuffing. The chocolate and cream added great depth to all the flavors.

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Gateau Aux Pommes

When Stephanie sent an open invitation to her Kids' Blog Party, I decided to play with fairy tales and came up with caramel apples. To find the perfect one, I had to buy a whole bag. Every self respecting blogger knows what I am talking about, we have to go through an entire stack of anything just to find the perfect one: not too big, not too small, not too bumpy, not too lumpy, and so forth. It is still summer weather here and my baking spirit is still thinking of plums, nectarines and other stone fruits. As a goood shopper, I just can't let an entire bag of good apples go to waste, so I started to perouse several cookbooks... until my mom pulled out yet another trick out of her suitcase: about 10 handwritten recipes that I used to make regularly as a kid. I took a trip down memory lane reading about Lenotre's fruit cake, chocolate mousse, yogurt cake and my beloved Gateau Aux Pommes.

I had it! We were saved! My bag of apples would not encounter a tragic end (without baking) but would rather find its fate in a light cake topped with a buttery crust. I remember copying this recipe from an old Tupperware brochure that came with a set of containers my mom had purchased.

Gateau Aux Pommes, Apple Cake, adapted from Tupperware:

1/2 cup flour
1/8 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 cup oil
2 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
4 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
pinch of salt

for the glaze:
1/2 stick butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg

Mix together the flour, cornstarch and sugar. Incorporate the milk, oil and eggs so that you get a smooth batter. Pour the batter into a buttered 9 inch pan. Layer the apples on top and bake at 350 degrees until light golden. In the meantime, prepare the glaze. Whisk the egg and sugar until very plae, incorporate the butter and vanilla extract. When the cake is lightly golden, pour the glaze ontop and put the cake back in the oven until completely baked through. It should have a nice crunchy top from the glaze but stay moist thanks to the apples.

Very easy, comforting and satisfying. I guess we are getting ready for fall after all.

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