Tangy Lemon Bars

I love a good tangy lemon bar, so when I found this recipe, I thought it was definitely something I needed to try!  The recipe is from Alice Medrich's book, Pure Dessert, and according to Ms. Medrich, a food critic at one point claimed that these bars were "too sour".  Too sour?  Definitely sounds perfect to me, as I like my lemon treats to be very lemon-y.

Very Tangy Lemon Bars
adapted from Pure Desserts

Crust:
7 TB unsalted butter, melted
2 TB sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour

Topping:
1 cup + 2 TB sugar
3 TB all-purpose flour
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice, strained

Preheat oven to 350.  Line the inside of an 8x8-inch baking pan with foil or parchment, or butter the inside of a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. 

Crust:  In a medium bowl, combine first 4 crust ingredients (all except flour).  Add the flour and mix until just combined.  Spread the dough evenly in the bottom of the pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the crust is browned at the edges and golden in the center.  Turn the oven down to 300F.

Topping:  Start the topping while the crust bakes.  Stir together the sugar and flour.  Whisk in the eggs.  Add lemon juice and lemon zest and stir until combined. 

When the crust is finished baking (and still in the oven), slide out the oven rack, pour the filling on top of the hot crust and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the center no longer jiggles.  Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack before slicing.  If the top comes out looking a bit frothy, gently blot it with a paper towel.  Slice with a sharp knife into 16 large squares or 25 smaller squares, or whatever size you wish.  Dust the top with powdered sugar if you wish.

NOTE:  If using Meyer lemons, reduce the sugar in the topping to 1/2 cup plus 2 TB.
Printable Recipe

I used Meyer lemons and found that the recipe was not tart enough for me.  I think it is an issue of me preferring regular tart lemons to Meyer lemons, nothing about this recipe.  Reviews of this recipe claim that it is wonderfully tart, so I will definitely make it again with regular tart lemons. 

Give it a shot!

Birds Nest Cookies

The clever girl has an Easter party at school tomorrow, and of course I signed up to bring cookies!  I wanted to do something that might look like Easter eggs, and after some brainstorming, I came up with birds nest cookies.  A good friend of mine makes "haystack" cookies for parties, so I took what she does, changed it up a tad, and made it into birds nest cookies!

These are perfect cookies to make with a kiddo.  There is no baking involved, thus no hot oven and no waiting to see the finished product!

Fuzzy Baby Blanket Tutorial

I have been making these fuzzy baby blankets for a while, and finally decided to (a) get them onto the blog, and (b) make one for Button (my little one due very soon)!  They are super easy and fast to make, so get ready...

Supplies:

What you see here is enough for 2 baby blankets.

You need:
1 1/4 yards of a novelty cotton fabric (above it is the birdy fabric, in the top photo it is the one with blue and green animals)
1 1/4 yards of fuzzy "minky"-like fabric.  At Jo-Anns, this fabric is called "Soft and Comfy", "Ultra Cuddle" or "Soft and Fluffy" or something like that.  This is a good item to use a coupon for, as it can be a bit pricy!
1 package of Blanket Binding
matching thread

A Birthday Surprise - Tiramisu!

A very good friend of mine (I'll call her B) recently had a birthday!  Prior to her actual birthday, her mother (who lives out of town) called me to see if I would help plan a surprise girls night out dinner for B to celebrate.  Of course I would!  Over the course of a couple of weeks, the mom, husband, and I deviously planned a get-together for B.  The best part, other than the dessert, which I promise I will get to, is that the surprise dinner gave me the excuse to spend an afternoon with B.  My strategy for getting her out of the house was that I was totally stressed out with being pregnant and building a house and having way too much stuff on my plate (which is unfortunately all true!) and needed some girl-time.  So we spent an afternoon together and then I took her to dinner, where another 6 of our friends happened to be waiting!

Honestly, if you are a busy mom like we both happen to be, how often do you get to spend an entire afternoon hanging out with a girl-friend?  Extremely rarely, in our cases.  So it was a beautiful gift to spend the day with my friend!

Anyway, in the planning of this happy event, B's mother mentioned that B's favorite dessert was tiramisu.  Mmmm.  We happen to share that favorite, I must admit.  And it just so happens that for Thanksgiving I had dinner with some friends who served the best tiramisu I had ever eaten (and honestly, I have eaten a LOT of tiramisu) and I had gotten the recipe!  A perfect opportunity to try out this recipe for myself!

TWD: Baking with Julia - Mocha Chocolate Chips

The recipe this week for Tuesday's with Dorie was Mocha Chocolate Chips.  Essentially, they are a chocolate chip cookie with some coffee and dried fruit added in.  I was not impressed.

I made the recipe as written (for the most part) the first go-around.  The recipe called for dried apricots.  It made about 4 dozen cookies, so I split the dough in half and used dried apricots for half and dried cherries for the other half.  I think the flavors of tart cherry and chocolate complement each other very well.  In addition, the recipe called for whatever darkness (or lightness) of chocolate you prefer, so I used 70% bittersweet for mine.  You actually use chocolate bars and then break them into nice sized chunks for these cookies, you do not use chocolate chips.  Oh, and the recipe calls for 2-3 TB instant coffee, and I used 2 TB.

Donut Bread Pudding

We recently had a function at church wherein we had tons and tons of donut-holes.  There were plenty left over, so I thought I'd take them home and see what I could do with them.  I am one of those very rare people (it seems) that does not really care for donuts.  I know, it is weird.  I just think there are so many other better pastries out there, why should I eat a donut?  Plus donuts tend to be too sweet for me.  Anyway, home I came with a bunch of regular glazed donut-holes and glazed chocolate donut-holes.

My idea was to make a bread pudding and I found a good recipe to try at Leite's Culinaria.  I had enough donut-holes to make 2 batches of bread pudding, so since the recipe called for dark rum, I made one batch WITH rum and one WITHOUT, just in case.  I say just in case because my intention was to bring these back to church and I wanted to be certain that those who prefer to not ingest alcohol had an option. 

Donut Bread Pudding
adapted from Leite's Culinaria
For the pudding:
6 cups day-old raised donuts, cut into 1-inch pieces (or 6 cups donut-holes)
4 large eggs
2 TB dark rum or 1/2 teaspoon rum extract (optional) 
1/2  teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
For the icing:
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 TB hot water

Preheat the oven to 350F and butter a 9x5-inch loaf pan.

Place the donuts in the loaf pan.  In a bowl, whisk the eggs, rum (if using), cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla until well blended.  Whisk in the milk and cream.  Pour over the donuts, turning the top pieces over and pressing down gently so all of the donuts become soaked in the mixture.

Bake until firm and browned on top, approximately 50 minutes.  Cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes.

While the pudding cools, whisk the icing ingredients together in a small bowl.  Serve pudding in thick slices, warm, drizzled with icing. 
Printable Recipe

While the recipe claims that this makes 6 servings, I cut a LOT more than that.  I think 6 servings would be ginormous and way more than I could handle, personally.  So figure that you'll get however many servings as you want to slice in your loaf pan. 

Oh, and you may be wondering how this went over at church?

A picture is worth 1000 words!  I realized I hadn't photographed the plates so I ran out to take a picture and this is what was left!  They were devoured!

TWD: Baking with Julia - more croissants!

This isn't actually a Tuesday's with Dorie week, but since we did croissants last week and I only used half of the dough for the regular croissants, I figured I would post the Almond and the Chocolate croissants this week!  First of all, lets start off with YUM.  Oh, and by jumping up and down in excitement that I actually made croissants, including almond and chocolate ones!  I really feel like I made a big baking accomplishment! 

If you recall from my post on croissants, when you get to step 5, you have finished the croissant dough and it is shaped like a book.  You cut that book in half and now you have two mini-books.  With the first mini-book, I made regular croissants.  With the second mini-book, I made almond and chocolate croissants! 

To start, I made the almond filling.  It is made of room temperature butter, ground almonds, confectioners sugar, corn starch and almond extract.  This is mixed up in a food processor and then refrigerated so it can firm up.  It is supposed to refrigerate for an hour or two, but I was anxious to get these done so I put my mixture in the freezer while I rolled out the dough and made the chocolate croissants. 

I rolled the dough out the same way, but this time cut it into some triangles (with a 4 inch base this time) for the almond croissants, and some rectangles for the chocolate croissants.  I used the diagonal scraps from the triangle and initially stuck them together to make more triangles, and then stuck the triangles together make a rectangle!  Thank you, junior high geometry class!  The squished together triangles are in the upper left corner of this photo.

Then it was time to roll the chocolate croissants.  The actual recipe suggests that you use chocolate batons but I didn't have those nor did I actually look for them in the store.  However, if I was ever to make chocolate croissants again, I would definitely find the batons.  It is very tricky to roll chocolate chips in pastry dough without having them fall out all over the place!  Plus, the recipe calls for an ounce of chocolate, which is quite a lot!  Chocolate croissants get rolled into a tube, not a typical croissant shape.  I have no idea why that is, do you?

After the rectangles were all filled with chocolate, it was time to make the almond croissants.  Now, I have to admit that almond croissants are my favorite.  If I am going to purchase a croissant, my first choice will always be almond.  I am a huge fan.  For the almond croissants, you use one tablespoon of almond filling per croissant, and I found that the filling recipe made enough for approximately 10 croissants.  Not enough for me, but plenty for the way I made this recipe.  Almond croissants are rolled up just like a regular croissant, in the typical shape. 

The croissants are placed on a parchment covered baking sheet, brushed with egg wash, and allowed to rise for 3 1/2 to 4 hours.  They went in the turned-off oven with a pan of steaming water underneath, just as the regular croissants did.  However with this batch, some of the butter seemed to leak out while rising...  I am not sure what the difference was or why this batch had some butter leakage and the first batch did not.  The only thing I can think is that it was more humid when I made these so maybe the humidity plus the steaming water was too much?  Regardless, I carefully wiped up the bits of leaked butter (the almond ones leaked more than the chocolate ones) and then brushed them again with egg wash.  I sprinkled more crushed almonds and some slivered almonds on the almond croissants, and sprinkled some vanilla sugar on the chocolate ones.  Then I baked them as I did the first batch. 

And here they are!  The chocolate croissant on the bottom right is the one made of the random scraps of dough... not so pretty but according to the clever girl, it was delicious!  I have to admit that I prefer the almond ones to the chocolate ones...  I almost feel like the chocolate ones are just a bit much for me, which I know is totally crazy.  Too much chocolate?  That is just ridiculous!

Yum.  What a divine treat!  It was definitely some work, but such an accomplishment!