Showing posts with label lemon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lemon. Show all posts

Lemon Blueberry Crumb Bars

6:09 AM | Labels: , , ,


sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, lemon zest, egg, and butter before it gets blended to be the crumble

Crumble mixture- half for the bottom of the pan, half for the crumble topping

Blueberry mixture

Pour your blueberries on your crust and spread evenly

Crumble your topping over the layer of blueberries, bake and you are done!


Look out it's blueberry season! That means I went on a blueberry baking binge. As you know I live in Dallas, Texas and some of you might have heard that Texas is known for it's fabulous blueberries. A few years ago a few friends of mine read about Blueberry Hill Farms in Edom, TX on Style/Swoon, the place looked like fun so we loaded up in the car and headed east to pick some blueberries. Little did we know that Edom turned out to be a great little town with fun shops and a great local cafe called The Shed- if you stop here I suggest you order either a piece or the entire Lemon Ice Box pie and take it home to enjoy all week.
Blueberry season lasts through the end of July, I recommend going early so that you don't bake in the Texas sun. I was able to pick a full basket and then I bought another pre-picked bag in the store to bring home and freeze so that I could use them all year. Freezing is easy, first lay your blueberries flat on a baking sheet on a paper towel don't cover and place in the freezer for a hour, remove the berries from the tray and place them in a plastic ziplock freezer bag and return to the freezer. I like to take a cup out at a time and let thaw in the fridge or on the counter to use in my cereal and oatmeal throughout the week. To kick off my blueberry baking binge I began with Blueberry Crumble Bars, these are amazing and super easy to make. I hope you enjoy them. You should be able to get about 36 small bars or about half of that if you do larger squares.

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3 cups of all purpose flour
  • 1 cup cold butter (2 sticks)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • zest and juice of 1 lemon
  • 4 cups of fresh blueberries
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 4 tsp cornstarch
Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375 and grease a 9x13 pan.
  1. In a medium bowl stir together 1 cup of sugar, 3 cups of flour, and baking powder. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Uses a for or pastry cutter to blend in butter and egg. Doug will be crumbly. Pat half of the dough into the pan.
  2. In another bowl, stir together sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice. Gently mix in the blueberries. Sprinkle evenly over the crust. Crumble the remaining dough over the berry layer.
  3. Bake in the oven for 45 min, or until the top is slightly brown. Cool completely before cutting into squares.
These are great stored in the fridge and served cold as well.

Here are some of my photos from my visit to Blueberry Hill Farms...

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Posted by mercoon.boy

Lemon Bars

2:20 PM | Labels: ,


It's hot out, and it is also the day after 4th of July, I think that calls for something refreshing and easy! My Aunt had given me a recipe for Lemon Bars a few years ago which is lovely but I adapted it a little bit to make them bigger (I guess Texas is rubbing off on me) and I also made a few small changes to the crust. I think they turned out really nice. What I like most about the recipe is that it is easy, probably one of the easiest lemon bar recipes you will ever try. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
  • 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
  • 2/3 cup confectioners sugar
  • 3 tbl light brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • 6 eggs
  • 3 cups sugar
  • 6 tbl flour
  • 1/2 cup lemon juice
  • zest of 1 lemon
  • additional confectioners sugar for dusting
  1. Combine, flour, powdered sugar, brown sugar, and butter in a bowl using a pastry cutter. Pat into a greased 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan, Bake at 350 for 20 min.
  2. In another bowl whisk eggs, sugar, flour and lemon juice until frothy, stir in lemon zest. Pour over hot crust. Bake at 350 for 20-25 min or until light brown.
  3. Cool on a wire rack, dust with confectioners sugar, and cut into squares.

Crust ready to go into the oven

Filling added to the top of the hot crust ready to be baked for 20-25 min or until golden brown

Just out of the oven, let cool completely before adding the powdered sugar


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Posted by mercoon.boy

White Chocolate Lemon Truffles

7:44 PM | Labels: , , ,

Chocolate, butter, and cream melting over the double boiler

Chocolate, butter and cream completely melted and beautiful!

Here is the mixture after 2 hours of chilling in the fridge... should be hard

Rolling...

A friend of mine was having her second annual "white party"last weekend and asked me to make something small and sweet to bring along. After searching high and low for a recipe I decided to try making truffles. First problem was that I have never made truffles before, second was that truffles are normally brown... not ideal for a white party. I came across a recipe for white chocolate truffles which sounded perfect. Once I began researching deeper I decided I couldn't leave it at just white chocolate, I needed something else, so I decided to make white chocolate LEMON truffles! By now you can probably tell I like lemon in my desserts - I find lemon flavor to be great in the summer and it helps cut some of the sweetness in a overly sweet recipe.
At first I was so excited to make my first batch of truffles, then I was instantly scared since I had never made them before and didn't know how simple or how hard they could be. Don't worry!!! these are very simple! I figured it would be best to start slow, now that I have mastered these let the truffle testing begin! They were a huge hit at the party, one of my friends even wrapped a few extra in a paper towel and put them in his pocket for later... hah. Hope you guys like them.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup of white chocolate - I use Ghirardelli white chips which are easy to find in the baking isle of the grocery store.
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter - If you use salted don't add any extra salt in the end, they will be way to salty.
3 Tbsp. heavy cream
Pinch of salt
1 tsp. Lemon extract
Powdered sugar, for rolling/dusting
1 lemon for zesting if you like

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil on the stove top.
2. Melt the chocolate, butter and cream over the double boiler while stirring (make sure you use a glass bowl over the double boiler) I recommend staying by the mixture during this process so you can be sure it won't burn.
3. Once melted you can remove from the heat and stir in the salt and extract.
4. Allow to cool a bit before covering it with plastic wrap, refrigerate for at least 2 hours, overnight works fine as well.
5. With a mellon baller or if you don't have one you can always use a spoon scoop out the mixture and form into balls (they don't have to be perfect) this can be a bit messy since the chocolate will start to melt and stick to your hands. Roll the balls in the powdered sugar and set a cookie sheet. Once your done you can put them in a cute bowl for presentation and zest some lemon over the top so everyone will know they have lemon flavor in them.
6. Store these covered in the fridge for up to a week or you can store these in the freezer for longer storage.

Recipe makes about 24 truffles

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Posted by mercoon.boy

Oatmeal Whoopie Pie with a twist of lemon please?

2:23 PM | Labels: , , , ,



According to food historians, the term "Whoopie Pie" came from back in the day when Amish woman would make these little cookie concoctions for their husbands lunchboxes before they went out into the fields. When the farmers would find these treats in their lunch, they would shout "Whoopie!" - I'm not so sure about that story but I can say that these little bad boys are enough to make anyone yell out for sugary joy.
This recipe was originally my amazing Auntie Barbara's :-) she was kind enough to share with me many of her amazing recipes and now I am sharing it with you only I have made a few changes to put my own twist on things and not completely rip of my sweet aunt. These aren't your traditional whoopie pies as you might expect them to be soft like the kind you buy in the grocery store. I used to love the Little Debbie version that come in a box when I was little. The have more of a cookie texture with a hit of lemon in the cream filling to help cut the sweetness of the cookie and cream. Since these are oatmeal they are great in the fall or in the summer since they have that summery lemon tang.

Here's the recipe:

COOKIES:
  • 1 C. Butter, softened
  • 1 C. Packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 C. Sugar
  • 1 Large egg
  • 2 Tsp. Vanilla
  • 1 1/2 C Flour
  • 1 Tsp. Baking soda
  • 1/2 Tsp. Salt
  • 1/4 Tsp. Cinnamon
  • 3 C. Uncooked oatmeal oats. (You can use a little more depending on how stiff you want your cookies)

Beat butter and sugars together... add egg and vanilla. mix in flour, salt, cinnamon, and soda. Stir in oats. Bake at 375 8-10 min (watch them depending on your oven). COOL COMPLETELY before applying your cream filling. You will have a mess on your hands if you rush the cooling process. What is nice about this recipe is you can make the cookies in advance and wait to make the cream filling when you are ready to serve.

Cream Filling:

  • 1/2 C. Butter softened
  • 2 C. Powdered sugar
  • 2 Tbl Whipping Cream
  • 1 Tsp. Vanilla
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • Juice of half of a lemon (you can add more or less depending on how lemony you want the filling)

Combine butter, sugar, whipping cream, vanilla, and fresh lemon juice in a bowl. Beat on high until light and fluffy. Add your lemon zest last and mix in lightly. Make a sandwich with the cookies. Use a pastry bag with a round tip if you want to make them neater and in my opinion your life easier.

Whoopie!

NOTE: I just made this recipe in a friends oven which is much nicer then mine and I noticed that since her oven was on confection it made the cookies much fluffier which made them harder. If using a confection oven I would use another 1/4 cup of butter and make the dough flatter rather then balls on the pan, this way they will spread thinner when you bake them. Hope this helps!

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Posted by mercoon.boy

Recipe of the Week - Lemon Cheesecake

7:19 AM | Labels: , , ,

We used to make this cheesecake when we were little. I remember crushing up the biscuits for the base..
It was a recipe that came on the back of the Philly Cream Cheese packets, but they don't have it on there anymore. I went searching on the Kraft website and found it.

Perfect for Easter Sunday lunch.

You Will Need..
1 1/4 cups biscuits crushed (I used milk arrowroot, and I used almost 2 cups because our cheesecake plate is huuugge)
80 grams butter - melted (If you're using 2 cups, you need more butter, I probably ended up doubling this..)
500 grams Philadelphia Cream Cheese
400 gram can of Sweetened Condensed Milk
3 teaspoons gelatine, dissolved in 1/4 cup boiling water
1/3 cup lemon juice (worked out to be 1 1/2 medium lemons)
2 Tablespoons grated lemon rind (I used 2 lemons)

Crush your biscuits until they are like breadcrumbs. (Place your biscuits in your food processor, or in a bowl and crush with the end of your rolling pin)
Combine the melted butter and biscuit crumbs.
Press evenly into the base of your pan.
Chill in the fridge until you've made the filling.
Beat the cream cheese until smooth.
Beat in the condensed milk and geletine mixture until smooth.
Add the lemon juice and rind and beat until its all mixed together.
(I added everything at once. I sometimes fail to read recipes completely before starting.. It's a bad habit!)
Pour the cream cheese mixture into your prepared dish and smooth out evenly.
Add some left over lemon to the top if you wish...
Place in the fridge to set for 3 hours or overnight. Enjoy!

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Posted by mercoon.boy
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