Olive Oil-Poached Halibut

I own more than my fair share of cookbooks.  I have the best of intentions to use every book that I keep on my shelves (and conversely, not to keep books that I don't use), but invariably there are cookbooks that I find myself reaching for without even thinking.  One of these is the big yellow Gourmet Cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichl.  I have never been disappointed by any of its recipes, so when I saw a recipe for Oil Poached Fish I had enough confidence to try this new-to-me technique with my very favorite fish, halibut.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  Although I found the recipe in my copy of the yellow Gourmet cookbook, the good news is that you can find the recipe online, here.  Although really you won't go wrong if you purchase the cookbook.  And guess what? I just checked at Amazon, and the price right now is $7.17.  You can hardly afford not to buy the book!

-  The recipe has just five ingredients: fish, lemon, capers, olive oil and parsley, along with salt and pepper.  I made half a recipe in an oval Pyrex dish.

-  It's a quick matter to throw the fish together, but it is baked low and slow - at 250 degrees for an hour or more.

the verdict:

This fish was velvety, tender, and subtly but clearly flavored with citrus, herb and salty elements.  I'll definitely return to this recipe.  As I wrote in my notes: 
the fish was not oily tasting
the oil was not fishy tasting

Although the recipe says that you can re-use the oil for other purposes, that's not exactly my forte, so I'll admit that I didn't keep the oil.

My friend Di of the blog Di's Kitchen Notebook is once again hosting a seasonal blog event.  The theme this time around is "Cooking The Books" and I'm submitting this recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks.  Click over to her post to see the other fun things that bloggers have cooked and baked from their books.

Lemon Loaf

 

There's one thing to be said for the Lemon Loaf cake that was assigned for this week's recipe by the Tuesdays With Dorie; Baking With Julia baking group: it's really easy. Really, really easy.  I arrived home very late on this rainy Tuesday afternoon and stood in my kitchen debating with myself whether I had time to bake this cake.  Or more importantly, whether there would be enough daylight after the cake was baked to photograph it so that I could actually post it on time.  When I saw how short the recipe is, I started pulling out ingredients and before I knew it, the cake was in the oven.  And was baked, cooled (mostly) and sliced in time to photograph in natural light on the back deck, thanks in just a small measure to Daylight Savings Time.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  You can find the recipe for the Lemon Loaf on the blogs of this week's hosts:

Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life

-  The virtue of this recipe is that it is made in a bowl with a whisk; no mixer or creaming of butter required.  Instead, the butter is melted and folded into the cake batter at the end.

-  I baked 1/2 recipe, in a little skinny loaf pan that my daughter JDE brought back from her 2011 trip to Hong Kong.

-  All of the lemon flavor of the recipe is from lemon zest.  I wanted that zest to contribute its lemony limits, so I used a favorite Dorie Greenspan tip: first I rubbed the zest into the sugar with my fingers, until the sugar was a bit damp and very fragrant.  Then I whisked the sugar/zest mixture with the salt and eggs as directed by the recipe.

-  I deviated a tiny bit from the recipe by adding a healthy dose of lemon oil to the batter (about 1/2 teaspoon for my half recipe).

the verdict:

This had a wonderfully dense, moist crumb, but wasn't in the least bit heavy or dull.  The lemon flavor was subtle, but noticeable (in part from the lemon oil I'm guessing).  It made a wonderful dessert with some sliced strawberries.  This is a great recipe to keep bookmarked for those occasions where you need a not-fussy, quick, easily transportable cake.  Although I kept mine plain, the cake could easily be gussied up by adding a lemon glaze or soaking it with a lemon syrup.

Lemon Cream Tart + Grapefruit Cream Tart

Four years ago this week the bakers of Tuesdays With Dorie had a choice of recipes: either Dorie Greenspan's Most Extraordinary Lemon Cream Tart or her Orange Cream Tart.  I'm still working away at making every recipe in the book, so I made both! The lemon tart was pretty much by the book, but in my kitchen the orange cream tart transformed into a grapefruit version with a chocolate crust.  In both cases, I froze most of the cream for future use and assembled mini tarts for tasting purposes.

n.o.e.'s notes:

Lemon tart

- Dorie herself shared the lemon recipe on Serious Eats, under the headline "lemon, lemon, lemon cream," here.  Additionally, in May of 2008 Dorie revisited the recipe for her lemon cream tart and shared tips in this post on her blog.

-  I made a gluten-free crust for my lemon tart, using Alice Medrich's shortbread base found in her cookie book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies. (I highly recommend this book, by the way!)

Orange tart

-  The recipe for the orange cream tart can be found on Michelle's original blog, here. (Michelle now blogs at the Brown Eyed Baker)

-  I've been in a serious grapefruit phase, so I decided to adapt the recipe from orange to grapefruit.  I used an especially wonderful, juicy, dark red grapefruit for the recipe.  Here's how I adapted the recipe: I used some lemon juice, but maybe not the full amount, finishing up a lemon that I'd already cut.  I cut the sugar to about 3/4 the amount specified by the recipe.  I used about 4T rather than 5.5 T butter.  I got a bit mixed up in my steps, and added the gelatin just after I started to put in butter.

- The grapefruit cream wasn't as tart/flavorful as I would have liked, so next time I'd use more lemon juice and perhaps reduce the grapefruit juice by boiling it down a bit to concentrate the flavor.

-  The grapefruit cream "set", probably because of the gelatin in it, and it didn't stir up smooth.  Although the filling looked a bit bumpy it wasn't really lumpy at all.  

-  I put the filling into a mini chocolate tart shell, and topped the tart with whipped cream and chopped pistachios.

the verdict:

Lemon tart

The lemon filling was nothing short of amazing: silky, creamy, and very tangy.  I mellowed it a bit by a dab of whipped cream on top of the tart.  Alice Medrich's gluten free crust baked beautifully into a sturdy shortbread cookie, the sweetness a perfect complement to the filling.  This is a great recipe to have in the gluten-free arsenal and can be used as a base for any bar cookie or tart.

Grapefruit tart

The grapefruit cream was subtle and the tiniest bit bitter on its own.  But it was perfect paired with the chocolate tart shell, which smoothed out the rough edges of the cream, while the cream contributed a subtle note of citrus to the chocolate.

Shaker Lemon Pie for Pi Day

Baking has a lot to do with math - proportions, quantities of ingredients, precision all come in handy for optimal results.  I seem to end up using extra math in my baking.  I'm always reducing a recipe, or increasing it, and I have to multiply or divide ingredient quantities.  Or I am using a different type and/or shape of pan and have to calculate areas or volumes.  This kind of math is oddly satisfying to me, although I know that it gives most bakers headaches.

But once a year - on March 14 - all bakers get to have FUN with math: it's Pi Day (3/14, get it?) and we can all just bake a pie to celebrate and forget about the actual math if we want!

For this year's big pie holiday, I decided to make a recipe that intrigued me: Shaker Lemon Pie.  The distinguishing feature of this pie is that it is made with the entire lemon, rind and all. I had read a lot of recipes for the Shaker Lemon Pie, and many of them stresses what a great pie the Meyer lemons made (and what a tart pie the regular lemons made). Whole Foods was fresh out of Meyer lemons the day I stopped in so I had to make do with regular lemon in my pie.  After all, most of the recipes - and I daresay the Shakers themselves - use regular lemons.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  As Deb Smitten explains in her Shaker Lemon Pie post, most recipes for this pie are nearly identical: 2 lemons, 2 cups of sugar, 4 eggs. A variation is to add melted butter and flour, and the recipe I used, from Molly O'Neill's One Big Table, followed this variation.  It it similar to the recipe on Smitten Kitchen, but doesn't require zesting the lemon before slicing it, and uses one tablespoon less of both the butter and the flour.  Also, the recipe I used calls for an initial oven temperature of 450.

-  My favorite part of this Shaker pie version is that it calls for a lattice top crust.  It looks so pretty and I like how the crust ends up being variable in thickness, with some parts crisper and other softer.

-  For this pie, the lemon is sliced very very thin, and I did this step by hand because my cheapo mandoline doesn't actually slice super thin. My lemon slices macerated in sugar on the countertop for about 8 hours before I put the pie together and bakes it.

-  I made a mini pie in 7 pie shell. For the crust I used half a recipe of the Cook's Illustrated Foolproof Pie Dough, which I posted here.  This time the dough was on the sticky side, which was controllable as long as I refrigerated the dough at every step. Making the lattice top, while not difficult per se, got a little tricky as the dough warmed.

-  I also made half recipe of the filling

the verdict:

This recipe was a runaway hit at our house.  My daughter JDE said it was her new favorite pie recipe, and this is coming from a girl who is a serious fan of pie.  Indeed the pie combined flaky dough with dense lemon intensity.  If you like lemon desserts, I'd highly recommend this pie - but don't wait until Pi Day rolls around again to bake it!

My previous Pi Day pies:
2011 Buttermilk Pie
2010 German Apple Pie

Meyer Lemon Pudding

Although I love most any kind of fruit, citrus is my very favorite fruit family.  It is in season over the winter, and through the miracles of modern transportation, rays of citrusy brightness shine into cold, dreary, dark days everywhere.  As a celebration of all things citrus, Di, of Di's Kitchen Notebook is sponsoring a (Late) Winter Blog Event - Citrus Sunday, inviting her fellow bloggers to prepare a citrus dish and link to it on her site. 

I had found some lovely Meyer Lemons at the store and looked around for a dish that would spotlight this sweet, mellow variety of lemon.  I settled on Meyer Lemon Pudding, perfect cheery comfort food for the chilly, gray weather we were having.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  I found the recipe on this blog post; it's from a book called Luscious Lemon Desserts.

-  The recipe called for 3 egg yolks, but used 4 egg yolks because the ones from the Jumbo eggs still looked pretty small to me.  I was in California when I made this recipe and it seems true that egg yolks in the western US are smaller than those in the east.

-  I didn't read the recipe and put the lemon juice in the saucepan along with the milk, eggs, sugar, and zest (it was supposed to be added later).  I realized my mistake right away and was nervous that the lemon would curdle the dairy, but I'm happy to report that it turned out fine!

-  I reduced the amount of sugar to 2/3 cup, wanted to retain some tartness of the lemon.

the verdict:

We enjoyed this lovely version of lemon pudding, finding it subtle but unmistakably lemony.  We loved that it was rich and creamy and not too sweet.  The pudding was also a good keeper; we enjoyed it for dessert each evening for several days, plain and dotted with fresh berries.

You can join the fun of the Citrus Blog Event - check out all of the linked recipes or post one on your own site and add your link (until March 25, 2012).

{TWD} Maxi Madeleines

This week the other Tuesdays With Dorie selection (earlier today I posted Depths of Fall Butternut Squash Pie) gives a nod to Dorie Greenspan's French baking roots, with Mini Madeleines. Since I baked the recipe in a madeleine pan with full sized wells and they turned out quite large, I'm calling mine "Maxi Madeleines". But as good as these taste, I'm happy to have a bit more madeleine on the plate!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This week's madeleine baking session is hosted by my Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook. Click over to her post to see some absolutely adorable mini madeleines, and get the recipe. While you're there, check out her other fabulous baking creations.

- These madeleines have honey and brown sugar and lemon zest among their ingredients - what a fantastic flavor combination.

- I made half recipe, which actually makes 7 or 8 full sized madeleines if your pan has the same sized wells as mine. My pan has only 6 wells; I divided the batter among the 6, and they were over-filled, as you can see from the extended madeleine edges. I probably should have put the extra batter in a ramekin to bake.


- The big issue when baking madeleines is getting the desirable "hump" on the backs of the cookies - that is, the batter should rise and be domed as the madeleines bake. I was lucky that there was a nice hump on the cookies I baked. After I baked mine, I saw a link that Di provided to a post by Dorie with some new madeleine techniques. It's always fun to see new tips to making baked goods even better.

the verdict:

These madeleines had a lovely texture and even lovelier flavor! They were a huge hit with my book group tasters and just about flew off the plate. I'd definitely bake these again!

Tart Lemon Bars

Lemon bars are the Little Black Dress of the dessert world. They are season-less, elegant, and always in good taste. Nearly everyone likes lemon bars, making them a logical choice for a group, and they are fairly easy to transport, making them appropriate for nearly every occasion.

I've eaten many a lemon bar, and baked several different recipes (and a box mix or two, shhh!) in my day, and I was eager to try this recipe for Tart Lemon Bars from Alice Medrich's book Pure Dessert. Medrich's recipes are always impeccable, a perfect trait in a lemon bar!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe here.

- The recipe can be made with lemons or limes. Medrich notes that in the case of using Meyer lemons, which are milder in flavor than regular lemons, you should cut sugar nearly in half.

- I made this recipe several months ago when I had Meyer lemons on hand, so I decided to try that variation. I like that it has less added sugar.

- As they bake the bars can get a foamy film on the top, but no worries, the powdered sugar will cover it.


the verdict:

These lemon bars are amazing. They have a wonderful lemon flavor on a buttery crust. This will be my go-to lemon bar recipe from now on, and I am eager to try the lime version next!

{TWD} Cornmeal Shortbread Cookies

When my daughters were in the 5th grade they had to do what was called a "country report." This entailed writing a written report about a country to which they felt some connection, dressing in appropriate traditional clothes and serving some sort of dish native to the country. Drawing at my husband's heritage, my older daughter chose Scotland, and she baked shortbread from Sheila Lukins' Around the World cookbook. And thus began our love affair with homemade shortbread in general and that recipe in particular.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- If you click over to the blog Une Gamine Dans la Cuisine, Valerie will have the recipe on her shortbread post.

- I made half recipe of these cookies.

- Unlike my usual shortbread recipe, Dorie's recipe calls for both cornstarch and cornmeal, as well as lemon zest.

- I always love a chance to roll cookie dough inside of a zipper plastic bag before chilling and cutting it.

- As they baked, these cookies spread more than I would have liked. (I chose the best ones for the picture) But luckily, the shape didn't affect the flavor!

the verdict:

Shortbread is always a favorite at our house, and this version was well-liked. It was perfectly baked; not dry at all, with a wonderful lemony flavor and a bit of a crunch from the cornmeal. The cookies were popular with our book group. Most of the cookies flew off the plate, and I left the remaining few with the host couple. In truth, these shortbread cookies don't match the buttery deliciousness of our usual shortbread, but I liked the special quirks provided by the lemon and cornmeal.

{TWD} Lemon Poppyseed Muffins - Guest Post

Earlier this month my oven suddenly failed. I quickly ordered a new one and arranged a delivery date. Then we had 6 inches of snow, followed by too-cold-to-melt-things temperatures, making delivery impossible. It has finally thawed around here and my new oven is scheduled to arrive at dusk this evening, that is, after I could photograph the muffins. I was faced with the prospect of a missed or delayed Tuesdays With Dorie posting, but luckily my daughter Allison, previously known here as A.L.E., agreed to bake and photograph the muffins and write a post for me.

Allison is an artist, writer, entrepreneur, and cook/baker. She chronicles it all on her blog, Friends and Hammers. I'm her mom, so I'm biased, but any time I need a smile or a laugh I head over to her blog.

Here's her post:

My mom asked if I could bake these lemon poppy seed muffins for her, since she's in oven limbo right now and, while you can fry an egg on the sidewalk in Atlanta in the summer, you can't bake muffins on the sidewalk in Atlanta in the winter.

They're super easy and I could do the (few) dishes as I went along. I had all the ingredients except for sour cream, so I used yogurt. You'll notice that my poppy seeds were seriously antique, and I didn't taste them beforehand per Dorie's recommendation, but they were fine.


Best of all, we had guests staying over last night and I was able to greet them with a big basket of baked goods. I like to be able welcome guests with food, especially if they're coming in from a road trip. (I think I get that from my mother!) My usual "impress visitors with minimal effort" standby is Dorie's Swedish Visiting Cake, but these muffins might just become my alternate.

the verdict:

Guests loved the muffins. Roommates loved the muffins. I loved the muffins. They were like fluffy muffin-shaped clouds of perfect lemon flavor.


The muffins were chosen for TWD this week by Betsy, of the blog A Cup of Sweetness, who has posted the recipe here.

{TWD} Lemon-Drenched Lemon Cake

When I was in high school I had a steady babysitting job - nearly every Saturday evening found me taking care of three adorable children and I even took some vacations with them. I have many fond memories of that family, including some very strong food associations. The mother baked fresh braided loaves of Challah bread every Friday, and there were always cold Tab sodas and Chips Ahoy cookies in the fridge, and a Sara Lee pound cake in the freezer. Invariably we'd slice and eat the cake frozen. I loved its tight crumb and the fact that it never ever tasted dry. Dry pound cake is just a shame, isn't it?

The recipe this week for Tuesdays With Dorie is called Rum Drenched Vanilla Cakes (I baked the lemon variation). Dorie Greenspan compares this cake to the texture of a Sara Lee poundcake.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Wendy of Pink Stripes chose these cakes for us this week. You can go visit her blog for the recipe. Her site is always worth a good browse; Wendy is one of my favorite baking buddies and she always features yummy sweets (including fabulous ice cream!) and wonderful veggie dishes. It makes sense that if Wendy didn't choose an ice cream recipe, she'd pick one with alcohol. Next time, Wendy, I'm going to try this cake with the rum in it.

- Although I love rum in my baked goods, given the very hot weather we've had in these parts this June, lemon sounded perfectly refreshing, so I chose the lemon variation. This meant reducing the rum and vanilla and including lemon zest in the cake and lemon juice in the syrup that soaks the cake after it's baked.

- I baked 1/3 recipe, which I split between a smallish loaf pan and a baby loaf pan. I drenched the baby one with syrup for tasting and kept the larger one plain so that I could pop it into the freezer.

the verdict:

My cake wasn't as dense or as moist as a Sara Lee pound cake. Nor was it as lemony as I would have liked. I'd definitely increase the lemon presence if I were to make it again, maybe adding lemon extract to the batter and the syrup. Or I'd skip the lemon and go for the rum version. Thanks, Wendy, for a fun and easy pick this week!

{TWD} Lemon Honey Wheat Cookies

The Honey Wheat cookies. selected for this week's Tuesday's With Dorie recipe, were a real bast from the past. Dorie Greenspan says that she clipped the recipe that was the basis for these cookies during the "back-to-the-earth movement of the 1970's." The cookie ingredients include honey and a generous measure of wheat germ; just reading the recipe transported me back in time. The first thing that came to mind was the Judy Collins song, "Cook With Honey" released in 1973, when I was in high school. (The lyrics, here, include such memorable lines as: "I always cook with honey…. Tell me how’s your appetite?”) Like Judy Collins (and Dorie, too, I suppose) I enjoy the taste of honey, and my honey supply is extensive and varied.

No child of the 60's and 70's would be without a supply of wheat germ, and I always have a large jar of wheat germ kicking around my fridge. It comes in handy for sprinkling over yogurt, or throwing in a batch of granola, bringing to mind another vintage song, Neil Diamond’s “Crunchy Granola Suite” from 1972. (“Drop your shrink and stop your drinkin'/ Crunchy granola's neat” - for all the lyrics, click here)

So armed with wheat germ and honey, and fortified by some inspirational music of the period, I baked these cookies in the appropriate nostalgic frame of mind.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Michelle of the blog Flour Child chose this recipe, which you can find her blog post, along with some fun pictures of her children helping with the cookies - isn't it great when they get old enough to take over the heavy mixing?

- I baked 1/2 recipe, and got 12 cookies. My 1" dough balls were 1 oz, or 30g; I guess Dorie's were smaller, as it appears that a half recipe should have yielded 18 cookies.

the verdict:

These cookies were good: soft, but a little chewy, a bit of crunch from the wheat germ, lots of flavor, wonderful lemon notes. They were especially good with tea.

Thanks, Michelle, for the great cookie pick, and the trip down memory lane!

Lemon Poppyseed Jam Sandwich Cookies

Last December for Tuesdays With Dorie, we baked Dorie Greenspan's Linzer Sable Cookies. I used a bunch of cookie cutters that I had on hand, but soon after I bought a Christmas linzer cookie cutter set. It comes with one spiffy spring assisted round scallop cutter and several small interchangeable holiday-shaped dies that lock into place to make cut-outs in the middle of the circle cookies.

When I was paging through cookbooks and magazines, planning for this year's Christmas cookie baking, I knew that I wanted to find a recipe that I could bake with my special cookie cutters - and also use up a bit of my extensive jam collection. I bookmarked a few recipes that were ground-nut-based, like last year's Linzer Sables. And one that was a plain cut out shortbread.

But then one morning, the Washington Post Food Section (@WaPoFood) sent a link to these Lemon Poppy Seed Sandwich Cookies out on Twitter, and I knew these were the jam cookies for me!


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This recipe is from pastry chef Tiffany MacIsaac, who is a major cookie afficionado, so I had high hopes that it would be delicous.

- The great thing about this kind of cookie: you can mix the dough one day then pop it in the fridge. Then roll it out in a ziploc and pop it back in the fridge for a couple of hours or a couple of days. Then you can cut and bake the cookies, and put the baked cookies in the freezer them until you are finally ready to fill, sandwich, and serve them. That's pretty much how I baked these cookies.

- Although the recipe provides a delicious-sounding cranberry filling that is made from fresh cranberries, and I have a bountiful supply of fresh cranberries in my fridge, I was determined to use some of my extensive jam holdings for these cookies. I chose raspberry jam, partly as a nod to the traditional Linzer flavor, partly because I wanted a red jam for the picture, and partly because I thought it would be good with the lemon flavor of the cookies. Plus, I already had a jar of raspberry open and in the fridge.

- Because I was in a hurry I just spead jam from the jar onto the cookies before assembling them. I have a lot of the unassembled baked cookies in the freezer, and the next time I assemble some I think that I'll cook the jam so it is thicker, as we did with the Linzer Sables last year.


the verdict:

When I tasted the dough right after I mixed it, I had doubts whether the lemon flavor was going to be noticeable in the finished cookie. I'm happy to report, however, that the cookies had a nice taste of lemon in a tender shortbread form, which paired beautifully with the raspberry filling.

I loved these delicious and unusual cookies, and can't wait to put them on the Christmas cookie platter; I'm guessing they will be a huge hit!

Lemon Pudding Cakes

This is the final week for the Tyler Florence Fridays group, which was formed last November so that bloggers spend a year exploring Tyler's varied repertory of recipes. As the TFF Powers That Be put it:

"So TFF peeps and fans, next week, Friday October 30 will be our last official weekly Tyler Florence Fridays Round-up. (Sniff, sniff) It has been a ton of fun over the past year and we have enjoyed getting to know so many great bloggers. We hope to see you all here for the party--with a new Tyler dish or maybe repeating a past favorite."

I've enjoyed participating - however sporadically - in TFF over the past year, and couldn't miss posting in this final week. Funnily enough, this is the first Tyler Florence dish that I ever prepared, his Lemon Pudding Cakes. I baked these last November and the post has been in my drafts folder ever since!

On a chilly day last Fall we had another couple over for a casual dinner. I served a hearty beef stew and wanted to finish with something rather light and refreshing; Tyler's recipe for Lemon Pudding Cakes sounded perfect. I love serving individual-portion desserts to company.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- This is an easy and straightforward recipe to prepare, and many of the steps can be done ahead, making it ideal for entertaining.

- As it bakes, this dessert separates into a cake layer on the bottom and a pudding layer on top. I guess that's why Tyler calls them "pudding cakes"!

- I used a tea ball for dusting the powdered sugar on top.


the verdict:

These pudding/cakes really hit the spot. I loved the different textures of the two lemony layers and the berries were a delicious counterpoint. I had one tiny quibble: I thought the pudding/cake was a bit too sweet, so next time I'll reduce the sugar.

This is an elegant and easy dessert for entertaining, or for enjoying all by yourself!

July m.o.m. - Whole Grain Lemon-Poppy Seed muffins

I know that today is actually the first day of August, and I'm just now posting the July muffins-of-the-month. My mom has been on vacation in Maine for the last part of the month, so I made muffins to have bring with me when I pick her up at the airport later today. Lemon-Poppy Seed might be her very favorite muffin flavor, so when I saw a recipe in my new King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book, I knew I had to make it. Nothing says "Welcome Home" better than your favorite muffins, right?

n.o.e.'s notes:

- I've heard great things about the book, so my hopes were high for my inaugural KAFWGB recipe.

- The recipe is for a Lemon-Poppy Seed bread, but gives directions for making a muffin variation. Scroll down to find the recipe as I made it.

- I followed the recipe exactly as written, with one exception: I didn't have lemon yogurt, so I used nonfat plain yogurt and added about 1/4 tsp of lemon extract.

- Actually there was an unintentional change from the recipe that I didn't realize until I typed it up - I only used 1/4 cup of lemon juice rather than the 1/2 cup that the recipe specifies.

- I order oat flour through my farm box, and it's fairly coarse. I love the texture that it gives my breads and other baked goods.

- There was enough batter to fill 15 silicone cupcake cups, which are a little bit smaller than the wells on regular muffin tins. I only made 14, so a few overflowed.


the verdict:

I loved these muffins, and I hope my mom loves them also. Some lemon poppy seed muffins are fluffy and cake-like, but these are moist, compact, and chewy from the oat flour. They are quite lemony and a little crunchy from the poppyseeds and the browned edges.

Lemon-Poppy Seed Bread (or Muffins)

1 1/2 cup (6 oz) white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup (1 5/8 oz oat flour
3/4 cup (3 1/8 oz)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 oz) unsalted butter
1 cup (7 oz) sugar
2 large eggs
2 T grated lemon zest (was 2 lemons for me)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (oops, I used 1/4 cup)
3/4 cup lemon yogurt, non-fat to full fat (I used plain non-fat yogurt)
1/4 tsp lemon extract (my addition)
1/4 c (1 3/8 oz) poppy seeds

[There is an optional lemon glaze, which I omitted.]

1. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

2. Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until fluffy.

3. Add the eggs, one at a time.

4. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients

5. Add the lemon juice.

6. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients

7. Add the yogurt and poppy seeds.

8. Add the remaining 1/3 of the dry ingredients.

9. Scoop the batter into muffin liners or prepared pans (makes about 15 smallish regular muffins)

10. I baked at 360 convect/bake setting for 15 minutes, cooled a few minutes then popped them out of the muffin cups and cooled on a rack.

{TWD} Tartest Lemon Tart

For 10 months I've had an abiding preoccupation with lemon tarts, specifically since last July 9 when I saw the Deep Lemon Tart on Delia Smith's site . It was love at first sight; I searched for the perfect deep tart mold especially for the recipe (all of my tart molds were shallow). I ended up ordering a lovely deep mold that was a bit smaller in diameter than Delia's, so I scaled the recipe to the smaller pan, making careful notes in the margins of my recipe printout. And then, as it happened, things got in the way - 42 weekly sweet things. I joined TWD in July and here we are nearly a year later and I've still not baked the coveted tart. But lucky for me, Babette of Babette Feasts chose The Tartest Lemon Tart as this week's TWD assignment, so I'm no longer in total lemon tart deprivation. Thank you, Babette for choosing this recipe!

n.o.e.'s notes:

[update: I've had a lot of questions about my deep tart molds. I've ordered them, in several sizes, from PastryItems.com]

- I planned to serve the lemon tart to my book group, so I baked a full recipe. I've never used my little 4" tart molds, so I tried them out.

- The dough yielded 5 mini tart cases that were fairly thick, and I think with a bit of effort, it might have made 6 with a thinner crusts.

- I had 1 Meyer lemon knocking around the produce drawer of my fridge, so I used that in its entirety, pith, zest, and juice, along with 1/2 regular lemon with pith removed.

- I whirled the lemon in the blender with sugarand the rest of the ingredients and then gave it a little taste. I was surprised to find that it wasn't very tart. So I added some more zest, pith, and juice, but what I really wish is that I could have taken some sugar out (and maybe used half and half in place of the cream).

- There was lots of lemon mixture left over after filling the 5 mini tart shells.

- I baked the minis for 15 min at 310 degrees then 15 min at 340 degrees.


- The little tarts came out of oven puffy with a little sugar crust across the top. As they cooled they settled down, jelled, and got dense. I popped them in the fridge overnight.

- The next day it was very difficult to unmold the tarts. Not one of the tarts emerged totally unscathed. Either a piece of crust broke off, or the tart collapsed. I managed to put my thumb through one.

Oops! I guess this one better be mine.

- For a topping, I used the rest of my faux mascarpone and made some more cream filling! This was my first attempt at piping cream. I was in a huge hurry, and didn't realize until too late that the cream wasn't in the center of any of the tarts. Very fun, though.


the verdict:

My tarts were quite lemony but not as tart as I expected. The Meyer lemon was too subtle for my taste; next time I will use regular lemons for the entire filling. My tasters all loved the tarts. One, HY, said that the lemon tart is tied with the pear tart as the best Dorie recipe yet (and she's probably tasted more than half the ones I've baked). Another person, AT, thought the cream topping not really necessary -she loved the lemon by itself. Although I thought the cream complemented the lemon nicely I'm not exactly objective about that mascarpone cream!

As an aside, in addition to the lemon tarts I served the 15 Minute Magic torte (from the freezer), frosted with Sweet Melissa's semisweet ganache (also from the freezer). My tasters were blown away by the torte, couldn't believe it had come from the freezer, and liked it even better than the prune torte!

My husband hadn't been at home when I made the tarts, and he drove straight from work to book group, arriving late, and promptly eating two of the tarts. He didn't realize until we got home that I'd made them - in a complimentary way. But the lemon tarts' glory was short-lived. My husband ended up preferring the Lemon Icebox Cake that I served two days later (but I like the tarts better!)

I would have liked to have eaten this as a slice of a full-sized tart (more lemony filling) rather than minis; my husband thought the little ones were great because of the higher proportion of crust.

These lemon tarts made me want MORE lemon tarts! I hope I can bake Delia's recipe before another 10 months passes... Aaaand, I saw that David Lebovitz posted a lemon tart recipe yesterday, using an unconventional French method of making tart crust that involves boiling butter and water! David's has an elegantly slim layer of lemon curd, very different from Delia's lush deep lemon filling. Oh dear, I guess I'd better make both!

You can find the recipe for Dorie's delicious tarts on Babette's post, or on page 336 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours.

Sweet Melissa's Lemon Icebox Cake

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays assignment is Lemon Icebox Cake. I don't think I'd ever eaten icebox cake before, and after making - and tasting - this one, I can say it won't be my last!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Jennifer of Keep Passing the Open Windows chose this recipe, and you can find the recipe on her post.

- If I were to stop and think about it, I'd be scared of this recipe, seeing as it involves separating half a dozen eggs and making a custard with the yolks and a meringue with the whites. Although I can usually handle egg separating, neither custard nor meringue has become second nature to me, and both are fraught with potential pitfalls. Luckily, with this cake everything came together quite nicely.

stiff peaks + glossy whites = meringue

- The meringue began to brown very quickly in the oven, so I tented it with some foil so it could cook for the prescribed time without getting too brown.

Ready for the deep freeze!

- I thought it was funny that the directions say to remove the springform cake bottom by inverting the cake onto a plate. No way this one could be inverted with that meringue topping on it! I slid a spatula between the crust and the metal disk, and pushed the cake onto the serving plate. The bottom crust is quite sturdy so that worked well.

You did notice the Wild Strawberry plate, right?

the verdict:

I brought this to a neighborhood dinner party. Everybody seemed to like it - nearly as much as the gooey box brownies that were the other dessert there. My husband loved the cake (even more than the lemon tarts that will be posted on Tuesday!)

This cake is light an fluffy and so cool - the perfect refreshing summer dessert. I really enjoyed the lemon + meringue + crust flavors together. Although the strawberry sauce was fine, it seemed to overpower the soft cake.

best version?

This icebox cake reminded me strongly of lemon meringue pie, only better. My husband would likely say this is the best lemon dessert I've ever made.