Lemon Bars

I hope this post makes you drool. Skoticus will be so proud of my pictures, they are lovely. Remember those super sweet, tart, almost fake tasting lemon bars you grew up with and devoured without thought? These aren't those. You have the soft crust, like a shortbread cookie, layered with a custard lemon center that has the best of a lemon in it, without being overpowering. The top is a nice crusty crumb top that gives texture to the whole dessert. Oh, yes, they are good.

I even hunted down a really cool glass plate I got from my mom's collection that I dusted off for these pictures. They had to be outside, lemon bars are only for spring and summer days, so the green grass fits oh so well.

I really like old glass that distorts the world. I want some old glass in my house when I grow up, it'd be really cool in the glass around a front door.
The mint was from my garden, I could host a tea party!

Without further adu, here's the recipe. It's from Wegman's Menu magazine. They left out the part that says to bake the crust, but since it had egg, I knew something had to happen, I put that part in.

Lemon Bars (makes 24)

Sable Cookie Crust

12 Tbsp Unsalted Butter

1/3 cup Granulated sugar

3/8 tsp salt

1 egg yolk

3/8 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 flour

Add butter, sugar, and salt to mixing blw. Cream on low until combined and lightened, scraping bowl and paddle as needed. Add yolk and vanilla extract. Mix to combine. Stop mixer. Add flour and mix on low until combined. Press dough evenly into a layer in baking pan. Cook at 350 until lightly brown on edges. Refrigerate 1 hour. After dough has chilled 30 minutes, continue with recipe.

Lemon Cream

1 1/4 tsp unflavored gelatine

4 tsp water

3 large eggs, slightly beaten

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tsp lemon zest (1/2 lemon)

1/3 cup plus 1 tsp lemon juice (about 1 1/2 lemons)

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

Sprinkle gelatine over water in small bowl. Set aside. Stir together eggs, sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice in top of double boiler. Heat to 170 degrees on medium, stirring often. Stir in softened gelatine. Remove pan from stovetop; let mixture cool to 130 degrees. Place lemon cream mixture into food processor bowl (or in a blender). Add butter through feed tube as processor runs. Pour lemon cream mixture over cookie base.

Crumble

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp vegetable shortening

2 1/2 Tbsp sugar

1/2 Tbsp honey

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp vanilla extract (I wonder how it would be to put lemon extract instead)

1/2 cup flour

Add butter, shortening, and sugar to food processor bowl. Cream on low until combined and lightened. Add honey, salt and vanilla extract. Mix to combine. (f you don't have a food processor, at this point use a fork or biscuit mixing thing to create crumble top) Stop processor, add flour through feed tube. Pulse until pea-size crumbles form. Spread evenly on separate baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes or until brown. Let cool. Break apart if necessary. Sprinkle crumble evenly on top.

Cover; chill approx 3 hours. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired. Cut into 24 pieces (I use a pizza cutter, it works great.)

Cupcakes Anyone?

I decided I needed another hobby. After each of my kids I started doing something new. First sewing (not so much anymore), then gardening (still got that, see previous post), running came with #3 (trying to get back into that one) and now I want to try cookie decorating. Right, you thought I was going to say cupcakes. Well, this idea was what got me started.

On Sugarbelle (located on the left) the blogger created these awesome 3D cookies that looked like cupcakes. I wanted to try it, and so I did. For my first batch, I made them pretty big, and I didn't like it that much, although my kids did. Since I didn't like them, I didn't take the time to make frosting, I just put store frosting in a pipping bag and twisted it around. Sprinkles make everything look better!
I had to try again. I made them with the 3 smallest fluted edge cookie cutters and stacked them up. Some of them I had the bottoms all the same size, others had the gradual size change, I didn't count the right size of each one. Looking back, I should have made sure the tops of the cookies would be facing up and that the cookies are centered. I don't have that much patience, I really wanted to see what they looked like and just drove right through the construction.

The hardest part about decorating cookies to look really good is getting the frosting the right consistency. I used royal icing and it was kind of drippy, so it went further down the edges than it was suppose to. But I like it that way. Except, with that much royal icing, it's pretty crunchy when it dries, which defeats the purpose of making a fabulous soft cookie. Again, the kids liked it.So I searched the web and found a good buttercream frosting. This seemed better because they said it dried softer.

This time I made some 'cupcakes' for a birthday. I followed a simple design and was amazed at how cute they turned out. I really like the frosting, but before I commit to that recipe, I also want to try a glaze frosting. It's suppose to be pretty hard to decorate with but taste really good.

End of Semester Coconut Rice Pudding

Yum.



When I lived in Maryland I worked with a lot of Philipino people and they made something like this. I never got their recipe, but when I had this one the Philipino dish was the first think I thought of. I have topped mine with fruit, but they usually topped theirs with some maple syrup and that was also delicious. I am not claiming my recipe is the authentic one, but it certainly reminds me of the Philipino food I had.

This is a great recipe because it is super simple and really diverse because you can put different toppings on it, so you could make it 100 different ways and impress people every time!

I made this one for an end of semester potluck, also known as a final, but in the English department once you get to a certain level there aren't really finals, just celebrations of the work done that semester. So, I made this for my creative writing final, in which we ate food and read and talked about each others' work. Quite nice.



Coconut Rice Pudding
1 3/4 C dry rice
1 can coconut cream (not milk, cream)
1/2 - 2/3 C sugar
Dash of vanilla
Fruit for topping

1. Cook the rice in a rice cooker, or however you do it. I used Jasmine rice, but any stickyish rice will do.

2. Right before the rice is done, mix the coconut cream, sugar, and vanilla in a sauce pan. Cook until the cream is about to boil.  *A note on the sugar. You can serve this dish warm or cold. If you are going to serve it cold, use a bit more sugar, if warm, then you don't need as much. You can taste sugar better when it's warm.

3. Once the rice is done and the cream has just about boiled, mix together in the sauce pan and cook for about 3-5 more minutes, until the rice has soaked up the cream mixture. If you are going to serve it hot, then you're done! Place on a place and serve with fruit on the side.

4. If you want to serve it cold, then press the remained into a 8in pan and chill in the fridge. Top with fruit just before serving. Once it is cold, it cuts nicely and you'll be able to serve it in small squares.

A note on fruit: this dish is best with fresh, ripe mango. I didn't have any fresh mango on hand, so I served it with some frozen mango and strawberries that I had in the freezer. And, like I said before, you could use maple syrup or any other topping you might like on this.

Garden Lasagna

I got this idea from Organic Gardening, but now you can know about it, too.

Since the weather is warm and the sun in sunny, I have the gardening itch again. I'm so glad, too, since last year I was so pregnant I didn't really have a desire to do anything that required bending over, thus my garden didn't go over so well.

Back to gardening lasagna style... This is also called the no dig gardening. If it works, I'm not going back. Start with your gardening space. I have a 4x8 foot space I bordered with 2x6 foot non-treated wooden boards and rotate the crops between 3 patches every year. Every winter I don't clear them out, so early each spring they get filled with grass and clover and other inedibles. So take that space and cover it with lots of newspaper, about 7 sheets deep. Sprinkle bone meal and blood meal then water thoroughly. The bone and blood meal is suppose to aid in decomposition. The second layer is alfalfa hay, do the same thing with the meals, and water. Put straw on top, then meal and water, finish with compost. I got my alfalfa and hay at AGWAY, just make sure they aren't for feed, you don't want any seeds in them. One bale of each gave me more than enough for 2 garden patches.

I bought a lot of spring crops since my little seedlings weren't growing as fast as needed, although I still planted them. I have red cabbage, green and orange broccoli, and brussel sprouts. I also put my honeydew and tomatoes in the ground. I added carrot and spinach seeds to the soil, let's see how the carrots do in this lasagna!

I already had a patch of garlic and salad greens growing, that I didn't weed very well but wasn't in the mood to deal with a lot of tiny, tiny purple clovers (I'm sure I'll pay for it later), but in the spirit of science, I put one broccoli plant in the middle of that to see if there really is a difference between my regular method and the lasagna method. I'll keep you posted!

Enchiladas

I've had a recent realization: enchiladas are easy!

I don't know why I didn't know this before, but they are. You can put pretty much anything inside, cook it in almost anything, add some cheese, and you're good to go!



I made these ones using a recipe very similar to Sweetlynne's Stuffed Shells, except instead of Italian seasonings, I used cumin, garlic, green onion, oregano, thyme, and tahini in the chickpea mixture. Once I had that, I put a bit of cooked rice, a bit of the beans, and some cheese inside a small tortilla, then tightly rolled them and placed them in a pan.

Once the pan is filled with tightly rolled tortillas, I covered it with cilantro ranch dressing, covered that with cheese, then baked on 350 for 45 min.



I didn't have enough tortillas to fill the entire pan, and I wasn't feeding that many people, so with the rest of the space I put extra rice and pinto beans, then covered that with the dressing and cheese as well. It tasted similar too, but not the same as, the enchiladas, so there was an instant side dish.

Bread of Life

I was attending a class on cooking with wheat and the teacher said something that made me smile. "When the Lord said I am the bread of life, he wasn't talking about white bread!"

Growing up, every Easter my mom would make 'Easter bread' it's nothing more than sweet yeast bread twisted to look like a braid, shaped into a circle, with dyed hard boiled eggs nested inside. A glaze is put on top and it's enjoyed for breakfast. This year the yeast smiled on me and I got a beautiful loaf. I used a hot cross buns recipe that included cinnamon, nutmeg and a dash of ground cloves. I substituted half the flour with wheat flour. I cooked this the night before and we ate it Easter morning before leaving for church.

I flavored the glaze with lemon extract so decided to tint the glaze yellow. But, I added too much coloring and instead of getting a soft yellow, I got this neon. It fit the flavoring, I added too much extract as well. oops.

Sometimes my mom put colored sprinkles on top, I added those cool edible pearls. They don't taste that good, I'll leave them out next time and go back to colored sprinkles.

Being overly zealous since the yeast was happy with me that day, I decided to use part of the ham as a braided stuffed loaf for Easter dinner. I used a standard dinner roll recipe with half wheat flour. After letting it rise I rolled it out (it was huge, I should have split it into 2 pieces) I cut at least a dozen slits 1/3 into each side.

For the filling I sauted onion and mushroom, added cooked broccoli and chopped ham. I stirred mozzarella cheese into it and spooned the filling into the middle of the dough and 'braiding' the stripes over the top. I covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight so I could cook it right before dinner. It got happy reviews from the participants.

On an end note, I used Splenda since I didn't feel like going downstairs to get more sugar. The box says you don't get as much browning with Splenda, and they were right. I'm sure adding egg white before baking, or using regular sugar would have gotten a better browning of both loafs, just make sure you don't over bake them!

Cashew Shrimp with Rice Noodles

This was WAY easier than I thought it would be. Seriously, I think this, or something like it, might become a staple of my cooking from now on, especially as summer comes along and vegetables are super fresh.

The inspiration for this came when a few weeks ago my girlfriend and I were at a local Chinese restaurant. We tried the "Almond Chicken" and really liked it. Essentially, it was chicken and vegetables in a clear, savory sauce. We liked it enough that we asked the cook how to make it, and got what was a much simpler answer than I anticipated.

Then, a few days ago we decided that we wanted something light for lunch. I remembered the dish we'd had a few weeks before and came up with this. Not the same thing that we had, but close enough.

Cashew Shrimp with Rice Noodles
3 Tbs olive oil
1/2 Large Onion
3 Tbs minced garlic
2-3 julienned carrots
1 C cut green beans
12-15 jumbo, pre-cooked shrimp (can replace with thinly sliced chicken)
1 C raw cashews
2 healthy dashes celery seed
2 shakes of caraway
3 Tbs corn starch
1 1/2 C water (or chicken/vegetable stock)
3 Tbs sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Thin rice noodles, cooked according to package directions

1. Sautee the onions and garlic in the olive oil in a large frying pan. Once the onions are caramelized, add carrots.

2. Add the green beens. (Really, you could use any vegetables. Celery, broccoli, peppers, or asparagus all might taste good.)

3. Once the vegetables are pretty much cooked, add the shrimp, cashews, caraway and celery seeds.

4. Meanwhile, mix the corn starch, sugar, and water in a separate cup. Pour into the pan with the veggies, and stir until boiling. Boil for about 1 minute. Then add salt and pepper to taste. This is a light, mild dish, so it shouldn't need too much salt or pepper.

5. Serve over rice noodles, or over rice, for a delicious lunch or dinner.



This whole thing was really simple. Basically, you could mix whatever vegetables you want, then add any sort of seasoned corn starch and water for a light syrupy gravy.