Orange you glad I said Lemon?!

Behold, the mighty lemon!

This post is filled with all sorts of yummy lemon flavored foods.  Doesn’t that make you happy?

Lemon squares

Recipe taken from William-Sonoma’s “Essentials of Baking” p.151.

I make these often for friends and coworkers and they are always a hit.  I know that Stacie isn’t a big fan of the often overly complicated recipes in this cookbook, but I’ve have to vouch for this recipe.  The most complicated part for me is separating the egg yolks without making a mess.  I’ve separated probably hundreds of eggs in my life and yet still I can’t manage to do it neatly.

On to the baking!

For the crust:

3/4 cups flour

1/4 cup confectioners’ (powdered) sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pea-sized pieces (I do this roughly with a fork and knife)

For the filling:

3 large whole eggs

3 large egg yolks

1 tsp of lemon zest

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (5-6 lemons) – The recipe calls for Meyer lemons, but I prefer regular cheapies which are more sour.

1 cup granulated (the kind you put in your coffee) sugar

6 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into pieces (best to use room temp butter)

Equipment:

double boiler (or you can use a heat resistant bowl over a small pot)

glass 8-inch square baking pan

baking thermometer

Instructions:

To make the crust (this is the cavewoman version of the original instructions)-

1) mix the flour, sugar and salt together in the glass pan

2) mix in the butter, and using your hands, mash all the ingredients together and mush them into the pan and at least one inch up the sides of the pan.  Don’t worry if the butter and dry ingredients don’t mix smoothly.  In fact, the rough mixture will result in a flaky crust.

3) bake the crust for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.  Take out and set aside when done.

To make the filling–

1) Fill the bottom pot of the double boiler (or your little pot) with 2 inches of water and boil.  Put top pot of double boiler or bowl on top.

2) In the top pot/bowl, whisk together eggs, egg yolks, lemon juice, and granulated sugar until sugar dissolves.

3) Add butter and stir until the butter melts and the mixture gets to 160 degrees.  About 10 minutes.

4) Take off the heat, add zest,  and let cool for about 10-15 minutes.  Then pour mixture through a mesh sieve into baked crust.

5) Bake for 13-17 minutes at 325 degrees.

6) Let cool for about 30 minutes and then put in fridge for at least 3 hours to set.  Dust with powdered sugar if desired.

I like to cut mine into little squares and put them in cupcake baking cups to give to friends and coworkers.

This one was more trapezoidal than square, but still delicious.

Here, you can see that I got over-enthusiastic about getting the squares out of the pan.

Lemon chiffon cake

I made this cake at the same dinner where I served Beef pie with Guinness and Mushrooms.

The original recipe is found at the link below, but make sure to read the comments as they offer many helpful suggestions.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Lemon-Chiffon-Cake-2207

So purty!

And fluffy and delish!

Hey!  Remember when I made all those lemon cupcakes?

Yeah, me too. <—Click on that for link to amazing post about amazing and beautiful lemon cupcakes.

Did you miss last week’s post on 2-lemon chicken?  Shame on you!

Click here now, you philistine!

Mr.Happy-Lemon-Face wishes you all the best of luck in your lemon adventures.