Goal for tonight, after a great day at work, but a day of rotten but not exactly unexpected news from my former employer: get this blog post written. It’s gonna be short and sweet.
Tag: lemon
Cream cheese butter cake!
I’m only a day late on posting for my baking group this week! Whee!! I give all credit for my almost-timeliness to the simplicity of this cake. Easy to put together in an afternoon between weeding and laundry (which, along with baking, pretty much = zen for me). Unlike most of Rose’s butter cakes, this one includes cream cheese, inspired by her pie crust. And her pie crust is pretty much the best pie crust there ever was, so it’s not surprising that this cake is gooood.
The Renée Fleming Golden Chiffon
I have to admit that this week’s selection from the Baking Bible was another one of those that didn’t inspire me, and is something I probably wouldn’t have baked if I wasn’t participating in this bake-through. On Saturday, instead of working on this cake, I made bourbon pecan pie truffles, because they just sounded delicious. I mixed & rolled them on Saturday, then spent some time on Sunday dipping them. I made a good mess, and had fun doing it, but managed to completely avoid baking this cake, even though I had all the ingredients on hand. Monday rolled around, and I saw everyone else start posting about it, and they all made some reference to it being quick and easy. Ok, fine, I decided to try and make it in the evenings this week. So, yesterday, I made the cake, and I said to myself, “I’m going to cheat, just this one time, and buy lemon curd for the whipped cream.”
Sigh. It’s always worth it to make it from scratch. I bought a jar of “lemon curd” tonight on the way home from the gym, and it was just awful. I knew as soon as I opened it that the smell was all wrong. Then I tasted it, and it was nothing but sadness. It actually tasted a little bit like stale vegetable oil. Of course, Jay pointed out that it’s probably not entirely the company’s fault, because it’s actually best before November 2015… which means it’s probably been sitting on the shelf at the store for a good long time, if a canned product actually managed to reach its best before date. So, it’s going back to Sobeys.
Lemon Jammies
What’s a Lemon Jammie, you ask? Well, it’s not bright yellow pajamas, that’s for sure. If this recipe is anything to go on (and really, it’s in The Baking Bible, so it must be), a lemon jammy (what is the singular of jammies, anyway?) is a lemon zest infused sandwich cookie, with something in the middle. The recipe calls for lemon buttercream, lemon curd, or your favourite jam/jelly. I went with lemon curd, since it’s easier than lemon buttercream, felt less like a cop-out than just using jam, and because this week’s Alpha Bakers recipe is going to my friend Gilad, and I know he loves lemon.
This recipe is pretty straightforward. You make a cookie dough in the food processor, let it chill, then roll it out, and cut your shapes. Bake, then fill with curd. Unlike some of the other Alpha Bakers, I really enjoy making cookies, and I find that they’re the perfect (most dangerous) treat to have around the house, because it’s so easy to just grab a couple on your way through the kitchen. Jay has much more self-restraint than I do (more than zero), so if cookies aren’t leaving the house, they’re going on his counter, so they’re not in my line of sight every time I walk through the kitchen. Continue reading “Lemon Jammies”
Lemon Posset Shortcakes
As you’ll recall, once a month, one of the recipes I bake goes to my friend and co-worker, Gilad. Unfortunately, at the end of this month (so, at the end of this week!), he’ll no longer be my co-worker. 😦 I’m glad he’s not leaving the area, and I’ll still see him at least once a month through this year, though! 🙂 Anyway, I had a hard time picking what to give him this month, so I let him choose. He said he loved lemon, so this was it!
I haven’t tried these yet, though the leftover posset was delicious. Maybe he’ll let me have a taste tomorrow!
Sticky Toffee “Pudding”
This is a cake I’ve been looking forward to making for a while now, and it’s finally come up in the rotation in the Heavenly Cake Baker’s group. As a kid, I seriously disliked most Christmas “pudding” types of desserts, though I always loved the sauces that go with them. I think for me, it was a perceived association with fruitcake, which I still dislike to this day, though I’ve since gotten over my dislike for Christmas pudding. Friends of my parents who have become good friends of mine used to make Christmas pudding every year. They would even send it across 2 provinces in the mail to New Brunswick on occasion to get it to my family years when we couldn’t make it to Ontario for Christmas for whatever reason. Anyway, this week’s cake is “Sticky Toffee Pudding”. It’s made with pureed dates, so you don’t get any chunks of fruit in the cake (which is the part I used to dislike). Also, it contains beer, which is never a bad thing. 🙂
More specifically, mine contained Waterloo Dark beer. The recipe called for stout, but since we keep Waterloo Dark in stock, and we really like it, I figured it couldn’t hurt.
Lemon Canadian Crown
The “Lemon Canadian Crown” is a frozen lemon dessert. Its name apparently comes from the fact that the recipe is from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Canadian in-laws. I figured since it has “Canadian” in the name, it was my national duty to make this week’s cake, as the only Canadian participant that I’m aware of in the Heavenly Cake Bakers group.
The cake is somewhat similar to a baked Alaska, in the sense that it’s a frozen dessert, with a sponge cake base, topped with meringue and baked to brown the meringue. There, the similarities end.
Catching up with the Heavenly Cake Bakers
Since I can’t seem to get my computer to recognize my camera, I’m going to have to fly mostly blind (no/few pictures) this week. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks at our place, so I missed blogging last weekend’s cake, and forgot to take many pictures of this weekend’s cake.
Continue reading “Catching up with the Heavenly Cake Bakers”
Golden Lemon Almond Cake
This week is another free choice week for the heavenly cake bakers group. Last time we had ‘free choice’, I made the no bake whipped cream cheesecake. This week, I gave the list of cakes to my husband, and asked him to pick. I told him to pick something that didn’t have a date next to it, but had a link for the recipe title. It took him about 30 seconds. “Golden Lemon Almond Cake.”
Baby Lemon Cheesecakes
This week’s Heavenly Cake Bakers selection is the baby lemon cheesecakes. Since this is a cheesecake recipe, I have no choice but to make it, and I’m not allowed to take leftovers into work, either. 😉
eatsndrinks.ca 