Lemon bars: part one

I made some lemon bars a few days ago. (and then I ate all of them, there aren’t any left now.)

I’m fasting today while I wait to get my cholesterol tested and writing about this is making me so hungry. torture!

Anyway, I used Betty Crocker’s classic recipe

She rarely lets me down. This was almost one of those times.

Lemon Squares

Ingredients

•  1 cup of flour
• 1/2  c butter, softened (one stick)
• 1/4 c powdered sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 c sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp lemon peel
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

the eggs at the farmer’s market are so pretty
farmer’s market, oh how i have missed you

Heat oven to 350 right away. Then mix butter, flour and powdered sugar (weird right?) together. It will be a very soft dough. Press it into the bottom of an ungreased 8x8x2 or 9x9x2 pan. Bake it for about 20 minutes, until it starts to be a little bit golden brown. Mine turned out extremely flaky, maybe too much so. (If anyone has fixes for that… let me know)

Meanwhile, make the lemon curd. Beat the remaining ingredients for about three minutes, until they are light and fluffy. I probably did not do this for long enough.

probably because I tried to do it by hand

I also added extra lemon juice. Pour over the hot crust and bake for another 25 minutes, at which point there will be “no indentation if touched light in the center” (thanks betty c!)

let it cool. I highly recommend freezing these, since they are exponentially better.

VERDICT: okay but disappointing

Me, excited for lemon bars. how quickly that smile would fade. also i was making a thumbs up, you just can’t tell

They were just not as good as I remembered. And definitely not zingy enough. I thought about making a very tart frosting for them from powdered sugar and lemon juice (to taste) but I am not a fan of frosting on bar cookies (eg, frosted brownies and i are NOT FRIEND). So i let it be, and ate them anyway, since they were still quite tasty. They just weren’t what I wanted to bake.

Now, I am not a person who knows when to quit. So expect an update soon, entitled LEMON BARS: PART TWO, the LEMONING

okay sorry that was a REALLY bad joke

 

I’ve been lazy with photos recently, so today i am going to town

a very late anniversary present

Food makes up for a lot you guys (photo courtesy of Elena)

What is the perfect present to give on a budget?

Answer: food!

What are the things Dmitry likes to eat?

• Tea
• Anything with coconut
• Tea
• things to eat with tea
• steak
• berries

Solution: coconut cookies. If you have ever been to a Passover seder you are probably familiar with coconut macaroons, and they seemed like the perfect thing.

this kind, not the French kind

Our anniversary is in early January. It’s May.

These are very belated cookies.

I kept getting busy and putting them off – I know, not very nice. In my defense we did exchange other gifts, so it wasn’t like I forgot completely. But still.

See, we went to the aquarium

sting rays are so romantic

I finally got my act together after seeing smitten kitchen’s recipe for raspberry macaroons. It turns out my aunt had made them for seder and they received rave reviews. How could I resist? More importantly, how could he resist?

So this weekend I got to work.

Picture courtesy of my talented roommate

These cookies are very good – chewy and tangy, with a nice texture. The recipe is pretty easy and the ingredients are cheap aside from the raspberries. If you feel like an indulgence, this would be a good choice.

Raspberry Coconut Macaroons

ingredients

• 1 package of sweetened flaked coconut (2 cups)
• 6 0z raspberries, fresh if at all possible
• 3 egg whites
• 1/3 – 1/2 cup white sugar

For this you need a blender or a food processor. I suppose you could do it by hand but it would probably be more effort than it was worth unless you really like macaroons.

Preheat the oven to 325°

Put the coconut in the blender. Pulse it so that it’s mostly broken up – you will probably have to blend it a few times, stirring it around in between. Add the sugar and the egg whites, blend until combined. You can add sugar to taste – the recipe called for 2/3 cup and I found them to be overly sweet.

Add the raspberries. Blend until the raspberries are mostly broken up. If you want you can take about half of the coconut mixture out beforehand and only add the fruit to half of the mixture – if you do this you can make pretty marbled cookies, but I didn’t bother.

Get a cookie tray and cover it with parchment paper*

*parchment paper is good for baking cookies and bread. If you don’t have it you can lightly grease the pan, but if you’re baking a lot it’s nice to have around.

Using a spoon, scoop the mixture onto the tray, forming them into little “haystacks” of about 1 inch.

pop them in the oven for 18-25 minutes. and then boom!

It’s cheesy but it went over well

deliciousness!

verdict: YUM
They may have been late, but Dmitry didn’t seem to mind.

two days later and they were all. gone.

happy anniversary!

(the other photos look a wee bit unappatizing, so use your imagination! or just go to smitten kitchen’s website)