Still Life, With Cats

Today I looked at the calendar and thought, okay, so I know we don’t actually do Valentine’s Day (mutual decision we both are quite happy about), but surely we can use it as a teensy tiny excuse for me to make Tiramisu for Two.

Richard enthusiastically agreed with this plan, so this morning before work I made the sponge, and whipped up the mascarpone and cream filling. Once the sponge was cooled enough, I cut out rings of cake and soaked them in a coffee syrup, and then layered them with the mascarpone cream in two wide-mouth mason jars with sprinkles of cocoa powder between everything. Then I covered them up and popped them in the fridge so the coffee soak would have time to do its thing during the day, and then after dinner, we got to enjoy them.

These were quite delicious, and super easy and quick to make. I really appreciate that lately King Arthur Baking Company has been sharing a lot more recipes scaled down for only a few servings. Plus there’s some cake scraps left, and there’s still lemon curd in the fridge, so I think we’ll getting one more tasty dessert out of this when we’re done.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

When one has made a large batch of lemon curd, one immediately ponders ways to use it up. Which is why this morning I made Meyer Lemon Morning Buns (I would link the recipe, but the URL appears to no longer be functional, so…hmm).

You start with a fairly basic enriched yeast dough, and after that’s risen for about an hour, then you carefully flatten it out into a rectangle. You slather the rectangle with some lemon curd, then fold over one side and sprinkle the whole thing with a mix of lemon zest and sugar to add a little more lemon flavor. Then you fold over the other side, pinch the edges closed, turn, and carefully flatten back into a rectangle so you can cut it into thin strips, about 1 inch wide. Those then get twisted and spiraled, and then carefully placed onto baking sheets. Another (shorter) rise, and you brush them with melted butter and then pop them into the oven to bake. And when they’re done, ta da, you have a bunch of lovely swirly buns!

The lemon flavor in these is fairly light (Adding some lemon zest to the dough itself would probably help a lot here), but otherwise we really liked them. One bun makes a delicious breakfast, so these will last us for a couple days, and the shrub in the backyard has a bazillion more lemons, so I’ll definitely be making these again.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

Today was kind of exciting. California was hit by a rather nasty storm, with winds gusting upwards of 60 mph in our area, and even higher down in Southern California. We had friends over for an impromptu game day, and halfway through, the power went out. Thankfully it was still light out, so we moved toward the window-side of the table and were able to continue our gaming, but it did mean my plan for (yes, another) soup for dinner was thwarted.

Luckily, however, I had made cake. Or rather, Sandtorte.

A little backstory on what that is and why I picked it. For Christmas this past December, my little sister, my niece, and I all got a copy of B. Dylan Hollis’s cookbook: Baking Yesteryear. If you haven’t stumbled across his baking videos, by the way, I highly recommend you check them out. He’s got a quirky sense of humor and some of the recipes he’s made are absolutely delicious (and of course, some, not so much).

Anyway. Since we all got a copy we decided we’d jointly make one recipe from the book every month, then report back to each other on how it turned out (Why yes, I do do a lot of food-related personal challenges, why do you ask?) In January, we picked the Grasshopper Pie, which I thought was pretty tasty, probably because I used nonalcoholic syrups for the flavoring instead of the Creme de Menthe and Creme de Cacao that the recipe called for, while my sister and niece used the real thing and apparently were not fans (hooray for my accidental better choice!).

This month we picked the Sandtorte, which is from the 1900’s. It’s kind of a pound cake sort of cake, except that you use half flour, half cornstarch, and you whip the egg whites (of the SIX eggs) separately before folding them into the batter, so that at the end you end up with a surprisingly light cake.

The recipe said to place a doily on the top and then sprinkle it with powdered sugar to create a pretty pattern.

Gosh, if only I knew someone who had several dozen random knitted doilies downstairs in a cupboard? Oh that’s right, it’s me!

Anyway. Here is my cake.

Not the best backdrop, but by this point we had no power anywhere in the neighborhood so I had to make do with wherever the most light was available.

The interior is a cross between a pound cake and an angel food cake, which sounds like a complete oxymoron but I don’t know how else to describe it.

It’s a tasty enough cake, although there’s not a huge amount of flavor. I suspect this would be much improved with the addition of a cream or a sauce. Perhaps some lemon curd. Hmm. If only I knew of a small Meyer lemon shrub that routinely tries to overload me with fruit around this time of year…..

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

I had plans to make something different today but it’s been a long week and we were tired, so instead we ordered pizza and I made these lemon cookies, which are basically a lemon crinkle cookie in appearance.

They were quick to throw together while we were waiting for the pizza to be delivered (and yes, I do realize that I could have just as easily made the originally planned shrimp dish in the time it took, except neither of us was in the mood for it).

The cookies are soft, slightly sweet, and have a pleasing scent of lemon, although I didn’t actually taste it. I did feel as if they could have benefited from the addition of just a bit of salt, and perhaps twice as much zest to bring out more flavor, but in general, they were a perfectly acceptable cookie.

Citrus used: 1 lemon

Total citrus used so far: 9 mandarin orange, 17 tangelos, 13 lemons

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

In honor of the occasion, I made Lemon crème brulee.

Crème brulee is one of those deceptively simple desserts that looks much harder than it actually is. It’s basically just a rich custard, baked in a water bath, then chilled, and topped with sugar that gets torched for that characteristic hard topping right before serving. In this instance, lemon zest is added to the mixture to add a little bit of citrus flavor, although it was pretty subtle.

I might have let it bake a hair too long, but it was still pretty tasty. We enjoyed it after a dinner of the leftovers of the salmon and risotto from Friday.

Oh and by the way, that weird potato salad from Sunday might not be the best sandwich filling, but it actually works fantastic as a breakfast when warmed up and topped with a sunny side up egg. We’ve had that for breakfast the last two days and I suspect it will be breakfast for the rest of the week.

Citrus used: 1 lemon

Total citrus used so far: 2 mandarin orange, 10 tangelos, 12 lemons

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.