Strawberry Lemon Cream Tart

This summer has been so hot and humid I have not felt like cooking, let alone baking. For those of you who live in Milwaukee, you can commiserate. However, when a friend asked me to bring dessert to a dinner last week, how could I say no? So, I decided to try to find a no-bake, or close to no-bake dessert.

Last Wednesday (7/14/10), the day of our dinner date, I was reading the Milwaukee Journal Food Section and suddenly remembered that I had a commitment to bring a dessert. Luckily, on the back of the food section I noticed a blurb about a Strawberry Cream Cheese Tart that sounded like just what I needed - fast and easy since I was going to have to make it after work. It also involved hardly any oven time, which is what I needed for this weather and my no air conditioning, poorly ventilated/windowed condo. So, I copied down the basics of the recipe and planned to change/make additions to what I was feeling, which I often like to do.

I bought a pre-made crust (shh! I was in hurry, remember?), pressed it into my tart pan, trimmed the edges off and cooked it on 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

While the crust cooled, I mixed the cream cheese (1 8oz. container, room temperature), a couple teaspoons lemon juice and a couple teaspoons of my homemade vanilla (which I made this time with Mount Gay silver rum and Mexican vanilla beans - yum!). The original recipe called for orange juice, but I used lemon because of my plans for the next step.

Note: if you have a really warm house, and you are in a hurry, do not try to cool the crust in the pan or even in the kitchen. I took it out of the pan and put it in the living room by the patio door so it could catch the breeze and cool faster. I always wondered why you see pies in window sills in old shows and movies - I guess that is why!

Next, I spread the cream cheese mixture and some lemon curd into the crust. The original recipe suggested spreading the jam out, or pouring it inbetween the berries after assembling the tart, but I thought the lemon curd sounded good, and I needed to use it up.

I then arranged berries (strawberries and raspberries) on top of the lemon curd. The recipe called for 4 cups of berries, but I don't think I used that many. After assembling, I chilled the assembled tart for 2 hours before serving (per recipe instruction).

Doesn't that look lovely?! This turned out being a wonderful, refreshing dessert - perfect for a warm night. And, it only took 30 minutes total to make. Can't get much easier than that!

Spring Lemon Cake

Last week Monday night I was really feeling spring. It had been in the mid 40s and sunny, and most of the snow had melted away. I was willing to overlook the black muck that was everywhere as a result of this and think flowers, pastel colors, light and lightly sweet spring time recipes...

So, even though my friend Claire was coming over and I had a dinner of ravioli and asparagus rolled in pancetta and cheese to cook for us, I decided I was going to bake us a cake as well. I found a Paula Deen recipe for Lemon Cake that sounded good, but the Joy of Baking's Lemon Cake recipe I found sounded a bit easier and just as good. Plus, I felt I somehow owed it to the Joy of Baking to finally make one of its recipes.

The recipe went much as expected: cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then the vanilla and lemon zest, sift the other dry ingredients and add them, along with the lemon juice, to the mixture, pour into pan and bake. There were, however, two things about this recipe I had never done before: line the bottom of the pan with parchment, and use a spring form pan.

I compared the frosting from each recipe and found that The Joy of Baking's frosting recipe sounded a bit boring and not quite like what I wanted. This is where I got a bit adventurous (not adventurous as in making my own recipe, but adventurous by using two recipes to come up with one cake). I decided to use the frosting from Paula Deen's recipe, which contained sugar, egg whites, water, vanilla, and cream of tartar rather than The Joy of Baking's confectioner's sugar and lemon juice.

The frosting was bit more work that I normally put into such a thing, taking 8 full minutes of beating, in a make shift double boiler no less! It was 1 minute of mixing in the bowl on the counter and then 7 minutes of mixing over the double boiler. When I told people about this frosting recipe, everyone came back at me with "that's the 7 minute frosting my mom (or grandmother) used to make!" I guess it's pretty popular. It did turn out very yummy, very light and fluffy - like "marshmallow creme" to quote Claire. I made one more addition to the cake though, on top of the frosting (and this was my own idea): coconut flakes.

After a few hours in the kitchen, we finally got to sit down and enjoy a piece of the cake, which I thought turned out very well, and was just the right spring-time kind of dessert I was looking for. Claire agreed, but stated that she thought we should have put more frosting on it. My husband later reported that though the cake was very good, he thought it needed a bit more lemon flavor. I thought the spring form pan and the parchment paper worked great, making a beautifully shaped cake. The last time I tried to bake a cake in a round pan, most of it stuck and I had a very lopsided and falling apart cake. When I told my step-mom about this she said it was more the parchment than the spring form that made the cake come out nicely. I plan on testing this theory on future cakes, and am not so afraid to attempt another layer cake now.

The next day, when going for leftovers, I noticed the frosting had acquired a slight crust to it. By day 3, it was so dried up that it was almost nonexistent. This seemed weird to me. Should I have refrigerated the cake, or would that have made it even worse? I can only guess it has something to do with the whipped egg whites and some reaction they have after sitting for a while. I know I will go back to the cake recipe, but am not sure I would use this frosting again, at least not until I talk to someone who has had more experience with it.

While baking that night, Claire asked me, "So, what happens to all of the things you bake; do you take them to work and share them with others, or do you and Nick (my husband) eat them all?" Though I shared cake with Claire that night, and sent her home with a couple pieces, I guiltily admit that we normally eat them all. I enjoy the act of baking, the joy of seeing something I put effort into turn into something so delicious, and of course, the savoring of each and every piece of that baked good, that I just don't mind eating it all by ourselves. I guess that is being selfish, and maybe that is why I am not benefiting from the gym as much as I could be, but we sure are enjoying it...

Strawberry Lemon Vodka Cupcakes

I think I had my first fail.

A couple weeks before this Valentine's Day, a holiday we don't normally do anything for but have dinner just us, my husband and I both mentioned we wanted to do something more. I enlisted a friend to help make decorations, I borrowed a friend's Le Creuset so I could make Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon, and I set out to find the perfect dessert. I thought I had found it when I saw Strawberry Vodka Lemon Cupcakes on the Baking Bites Blog.

The morning of the holiday, 2 hours before we were to be at a reservations only brunch, I started the cupcakes. I made the recipe just as directed and, while mixing in the flour and milk, I noticed it was becoming almost taffy-like. After the third alternating mixture, the batter started wrapping itself around the mixers and got worse the more I tried to mix. With that consistency, I did not believe it would make anything worth eating. I called in my husband in for a "baking consult". He suggested that I either mixed too much or packed the flour too tightly so the mix was too dry.

Since I really wanted to have cupcakes for my guests (and lets face it, for me), I decided to give it a second go. I made sure to not pack the flour tightly and mixed each alteration much less than I did previously. The same thing happened, but not quite to the extent of the first batch. I was still worried it would not make anything worth eating, but as I had 45 minutes to shower, dress and get to brunch, I decided to bake them and see what happened. They came out looking like a dense, doughy muffin or biscuit. They tasted good, but were not light and fluffy or cake-like; they were kind of like the consistency of a buttermilk biscuit.

I was at a loss. I wanted a light, fluffy, cake-like cupcake that I could put a pink whipped cream frosting and chocolate hearts on. I wanted something that felt more like Valentine's Day, and these sort-of-muffin things were not it. When we got back from brunch, I scoured the net for an easy recipe, since I had to make it between dinner preparations. It also had to fit the ingredients I had on hand. I still had some strawberries and just enough flour and sugar for another try. I used up all the zest, lemon juice and vodka in the first two batches so I had to make do without those. But, there was still hope.

I found an Easy Strawberry Cupcake recipe that claimed to be "delicious and loved by everyone". They proved to be all that. The batter for those went just like I expected, though I made a few changes: I mashed the strawberries in a bowl with a potato masher and substituted some of the vanilla extract with lemon extract. I made a whipped cream frosting with red food coloring to turn it pink and just a touch of lemon juice for flavor. My husband melted down the rest of the dark baking chocolate we had and made chocolate hearts to top them with. They were beautiful, delicious, and a great end to my cupcakes trials of the day.

Unfortunately, with all the problems and other cooking going on, I neglected to take pictures of the whole process, except the taffy-like dough (above). However, we did get some good ones of the finished product, and even a rare picture of me posing with my baking.

I was glad to have some cupcakes to serve our guests, but I really wanted to know why the first recipe didn't work. Did I somehow mess up the recipe twice, was there a typo in the recipe, or was that just how they were supposed to turn out? I went to the blog and read some of the comments. I found that others thought the recipe turned out more like muffins as well. So, maybe it wasn't my fault they turned out that way after all.

Though early on I felt like I was having my first failure, in the end, I don't think I can call it a total failure. I had to make three different batches of cupcake mix to get one to turn out like cupcakes, but the second batch I mixed made for nice muffins and the third was great for dessert. I ran out of vodka and lemon zest. However, I didn't need the vodka to make a good dessert, and I had lemon extract to substitute for the zest. Finally, I feel like I learned a little about what consistency and ingredients, including how much of each, makes different kinds of baked goods. This whole baking adventure as I like to call it started as a way to get me off the couch, but has turned into so much more, and learning is part of that.

Happy Valentine's!

Lemon Upside Down Cake

Luscious Lemon Desserts by Lori Botham has been sitting on my shelf for over a year now. It was one of those things I wanted desperately and vowed to make every recipe out of in the first few weeks. Lemon is one of my favorite flavors and desserts are so good, what could be better than combining the two? However, my lack of motivation got the better of me and the cookbook sat unused until a few days ago.

Last Sunday, we had friends over for the Packer playoff game and made Cajun food and drinks. I had decided we also needed a Cajun dessert. I found some wonderful recipes online, including a lemon meringue pie. As soon as I suggested that, my husband pointed out that if I wanted a lemon dessert, I had a wonderful cookbook I'd been meaning to use for ages. Luckily, we had all of the ingredients for a wonderful looking cake - Lemon Upside Down Cake.

That was the start of an afternoon spent in the kitchen, not watching the Packer game with our friends. They were, however, gracious about it and visited me in the kitchen often (when nothing important was happening, of course). Lemon Upside Down Cake is not the hardest thing to bake, but it contains more elements than I am used to and some techniques (making and folding in stiff-peaked egg whites) that I had not used before.

While trying to make those stiff-peaked egg whites, I had to call my husband in to help. I could not get the egg whites to form any peak, let alone a stiff one, and was afraid of over beating them. Then, folding in the eggs, I was concerned I was either folding them in too much or not enough. The trick, my husband said, is to run the spatula through the batter and then turn it over the egg whites, making them disappear. You will have to do this several times, so don't be too worried if it seems like you are doing it too much.

Then, I got nervous when I realized I had forgoten to zest the lemons before I put them in the brown sugar, so I looked online for substitutes. Lemon extract was suggested, with the tip to use half as much of it as the suggested zest amount, as it is much more potent. After I inverted the cake, I saw that the lemons I forgot to zest wound up shrinking much more than expected. I am almost glad I forgot, otherwise they would have been even smaller! Also, the lemons turn out candied, which makes them taste very good (rind and all), but very hard to cut through.

All in all, I was pleased with the recipe, and my husband and friends seemed to like it. It was not the most Cajun dessert out there but, it was very tasty. I might have to break out that cookbook a bit more often!