Lemon tartlets

For a birthday lunch yesterday, I was worried we wouldn’t have any egg-free dessert for those in the family who don’t eat eggs. So I decided, somewhat last minute, to whip up these lemon tartlets. It was a bit of a race against the clock, but I managed to assemble them in time. Since it was my first time making this recipe, I wasn’t certain they had set, however, so I ended up serving the leftover lemon curd in a little glass to people who couldn’t partake in the bakery tart, and chilled the actual tartlets to enjoy today.

The dough is just a quick pâte brisée/shortcrust pastry, baked until golden and left to cool completely. I then prepared a lemon curd inspired by Nora Cooks. For this, I combined soymilk, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, and cornstarch in a pot and cooked until thickened. I did decide to omit the turmeric/food coloring, preferring the pale yellow naturally brought on by the lemon. It’s also nice to see the flecks of yellow zest throughout the curd. To accelerate the cooling, I transferred the lemon curd mix into a bowl, which I left in a larger bowl filled with ice water. Despite the simplicity of this dessert, I’m opting to post a short entry, so that I can find the recipe back in the future.

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LEMON CURD RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 240 g unsweeteened, non-dairy milk of choice
• juice and zest from 2 large fresh squeezed lemons
• 100 g sugar
• 2 tbs cornstarch
• turmeric or yellow food coloring (optional)

  Procedure

1. Combine all ingredients in a pot.
2. Cook, stiring constantly, until thickened
3. Cool completely. Store in the fridge.

Chocolate peanut butter cupcakes redux

For my friend V’s birthday this year, I decided to remake some cupcakes I had made for her a few years ago. Like last time, I baked a small batch of chocolate cupcakes, and made up some frosting with mascarpone, peanut butter, icing sugar, salt, and a little bit of heavy cream to loosen the consistency. Again, I didn’t measure the frosting ingredients, so just added them progressively until I had something that I liked the taste of. I did opt to keep it relatively thick, because this time I wanted to play around with some Russian piping tips I had gotten as a gift.

I was struggling a little with it to begin with, I think my frosting was still too firm from the fridge. I also learned that starting by using a tip with very thin lines wasn’t the best idea. Especially considering that my frosting was slightly grainy from the peanut butter. Once I both warmed up the frosting slightly with my hands, and switched to tips with wider openings, things went much more smoothly. Since I was using a coupler at the end of my piping bag, and since I was experimenting anyways, I decided to switch tips with each cupcake liner color. To play it safe, I kept a few “ugly” cupcakes on the side to test the piping patterns and get used to the technique before applying the frosting to the cupcakes I would be gifting.

So this time, nothing too special in terms of recipe, but a new decorating technique that I can experiment with more :).

Olive, cheese, and rosemary savory shortbreads

Another festive event at the dojo, another excuse to bake. I had already planned and started preparing a double batch of miso caramel marbled shortbreads, but a friend got me thinking of providing a savory option as well. As I had made that decision very last minute (near midnight the day before I would need it), I had to make do with what ingredients I had on hand. Enter these savory shortbreads.

Christmas 2023: shortbreads, panna cotta, and flan pâtissier

It seems like Christmas snuck up on me this year, so I remedied my lack of gift preparations by defaulting to my usual of baking desserts as gifts. While I played around with preparing panna cottas for everyone, it would have required too much work (and more small jars than I had ready at hand). So I opted for a mix of different sweets for the different “batches” of gift recipients. Another last minute decision was to bake an egg-free flan pâtissier (custard tart) as dessert for our Christmas Eve lunch at home.

Miso caramel marbled shortbreads

While preparing a batch of apple crumble bars for an event this week (which I just realized I’ve never blogged despite baking these a few times… Basically a recipe adapted from Short Girl Tall Order to use dairy butter, and adjust to my tastes), my first batch of dough for the shortbread crust wasn’t up to my satisfaction. This ended up being because I bought the wrong type of butter, which had a higher water content and didn’t act the same way as regular butter. Take this as a warning to learn from my mistakes and check your butter.

I quickly remade a dough for that recipe, and popped the “failed” one in the fridge to deal with later. When I took it out, I added a bit of extra flour to handle the excess humidity. Then I saw a small container in which I had stored some miso caramel from a previous experiment, and figured I could combine the two into a quick slice-and-bake shortbread. To obtain the marbled effect, I patted the dough into a rough, thick rectangle, and spread the miso caramel on top. Then it was a matter of folding the rectangle over, then cutting it in half to stack the two parts, and progressively fold and mix without completely mixing in the darker stripe. This does result in a bit of a messier log of dough than I’m used to, but the final product was worth it.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

     Shortbread dough

• 180 g butter, softened to room temperature
• 2 tbs sugar
• 1.5 tbs brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 200 g flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt

     Miso caramel

• 7 g butter, softened
• 20 g miso
• 15 g brown sugar

  Procedure

1. In a bowl, combine all the shortbread ingredients until smooth. If the dough feels too soft, add a little flour.
2. Cover and refrigerate for 1h.
3. Combine all the miso caramel ingredients together.
4. Pat the shortbread dough out into a rectangle.
5. Spread some miso caramel on top of the dough. Fold and cut to obtain a marbled effect.
6. Roll into a log and refrigerate, preferably overnight.
7. Preheat oven 165°C.
8. Slice shortbreads into 5mm rounds.
9. Bake at 165°C for 15 mins, turning the pan halfway.
10. Let cool on the pan for 5 mins before moving to a cooling rack.
11. Cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Cat cake

To celebrate the birthday of my aikido sensei (teacher/instructor), we threw a semi-surprise party at the end of class yesterday! As a potluck-style event, my contribution this time was the actual birthday cake. I opted to go all out this time, and made a cake to look like the birthday recipient’s cat (pictured below)!

Coffee walnut cake (+ muffins)

Wow it sure has been a while since I last made a new post on here. The main reason was because whenever I did manage to bake something, it was never anything new, so the desserts never seemed to warrant a post. Anyways, I’m here today to remedy that.

Christmas 2022: Reindeer spéculoos cookies

Just as most years, I try to do some baking for the holiday period, either just providing dessert for the family meals, or like this year, as homemade gifts for my relatives and friends. I was extremely short on time this year, and only got around to even planning my baking on the morning of Friday, December 23rd (with the family dinner the next day on the 24th and a load of work I still had to finish as well). So as usual, I was racing against the clock.

Lychee agar panna cotta

Back in February, for my dad’s birthday, I decided to try a recipe that one of my cousins had given me. This was for a vegetarian-friendly panna cotta, flavored with lychee. Since I was just making it for the family at home, I opted for a small batch (also limited by the ingredients I had on hand), and ended up with 8 panna cottas.

Lemon cake (+ mini)

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted anything on here. I do have a backlog of a couple of desserts that I had planned to post, but didn’t have time for it. Starting with these most recent lemon cakes! We went to Switzerland last weekend, and I wanted to bake something to gift to my hosts. Due to the summer heat, and the lack of emergency cookies in my freezer, I opted to go with a recipe I made a couple of times before. The lemon flavor also appealed as I figured it would be refreshing with the weather.