Archive for: lemon
When I have a couple of lemons lying around my kitchen and want to make a quick dessert, I often opt for lemon pudding cake. Pudding cakes are cakes that create their own sauce while they bake. The sauce (a.k.a. the pudding) forms underneath a layer of fluffy cake while the dish is in the oven. Although the recipe calls for beating egg whites to stiff peaks, this pudding cake is very easy to make and uses ingredients that you probably always have in your pantry. And that means that any time you have lemons on hand, you are ready to make your own batch.
These Little Lemon Pudding Cakes are single-serving lemon pudding cakes that are baked in small ramekins, rather than in a large baking dish. Pudding cakes can be made in all shapes and sizes, but I happen to be a big fan of individual pudding cakes. A single serving cake means that everyone gets just the right amount of sauce with their cake. They’re also easier to serve, since you don’t have to scoop out (sometimes less-than-attractive) spoonfuls from a larger dish. Whether you go with a large dish or small ones, this cake needs to be baked in a water bath to help the pudding layer form during baking.
The pudding cakes have a nice sweet-tart lemon flavor, with a pudding that is almost like homemade lemon curd beneath a layer of airy sponge cake. The key to a great lemon flavor is to use fresh lemon juice, so don’t be tempted to take shortcuts with this recipe. I will warn you right now that these are addictive if you are a lemon-lover, and they might turn you into one if you’re not already. And once you’ve made it once, I can pretty much guarantee that it’ll become a favorite and you’ll find yourself putting it into regular rotation.
+Continue Reading
A classic Tiramisu is made with ladyfingers dipped in coffee or espresso and layered with a mascarpone cream. The coffee is the key element and its caffeine boost is what gives tiramisu its name, which translates to “pick me up.” But a tiramisu is a dessert that can be very versatile and it is actually very easy to infuse other flavors into a basic recipe to create all kinds of variations that don’t involve coffee.
This Limoncello Tiramisu has a distinctly springtime feel to it and it is loaded with lemon. There is lemon zest in the cream and the ladyfingers are dipped in a mixture of fresh lemon juice and limoncello. The cream here is a no-cook recipe and it is made with mascarpone cheese, cream cheese and heavy cream. Mascarpone has a nice richness to it, but the cream cheese adds a slight tang that goes nicely with the lemon in the recipe. Heavy cream gives the mixture a lightness, so it doesn’t seem heavy as you’re eating it. The cream has only a light lemon flavor, providing a nice contrast to the stronger lemon flavor from the ladyfinger layers in the dessert.
The mixture that the ladyfingers are dipped into tastes a bit like a Lemon Drop, and it has a fairly strong lemon and limoncello flavor to it. But since the ladyfingers are only briefly soaked in this mixture, you don’t get the same strong flavor that you do in the limoncello alone. Instead, you get a sweet, lemony flavor that is a very nice contrast to the rich cream. Limoncello is a lemon liqueur and there is quite a lot of it in this recipe. If you don’t want to use a liqueur, you can actually make this using only lemon juice, for a lemonade-like flavor in the finished dish. If you opt for the non-alcoholic route, however, be sure to taste as you go because with additional lemon juice, you might find that you want to add a little extra sugar in to the dessert to sweeten it up a little more.
Garnish this tiramisu with a dusting of confectioners’ sugar or a little bit of grated white chocolate before serving.
+Continue Reading
I originally put this Vanilla and Lemon Layer Cake together for a friend who loves lemon. It wasn’t a stretch for me since I love to put lemons into baked goods when I have a bunch of them in my kitchen. The cake is made up of three rounds of vanilla cake that are layered together with homemade lemon curd and a lemon cream cheese buttercream frosting. There isn’t quite as much lemon as you would expect to find in a lemon cake (since the cake base is vanilla, after all), but the lemon flavor pops beautifully here and will win over anyone who is a citrus fan.
The cake layers are easy to make and come together quickly. It is easiest to bake them in three 9-inch round cake pans, although if you want to stretch this cake to four layers, you could bake the cakes in two 9-inch pans and split the cakes in half to get that extra layer. The cake is moist, has a soft, tight crumb and a very nice vanilla flavor. It would actually go very well with just about any frosting, if you want to use it as a base for other cake recipes in the future.
While I waited for the cakes to cool, I made a batch of my favorite homemade lemon curd. You could easily use storebought lemon curd in this recipe, but since you’ll want some fresh lemon zest to boost the lemon flavor in the frosting, you’ll probably have some whole lemons on hand for juicing anyway. My lemon curd recipe makes a little bit more than you’ll need to put the cake together. You could cut it in half, although it is easy to find ways to use up a little extra lemon curd.
The lemon curd is spread between the cake layers, and it is also used to flavor some of the Lemon Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting that is used as the filling for the cake. The frosting has just enough cream cheese in it to give it that distinctive cream cheese tanginess that goes extremely well with the lemon zest in the frosting. It is a little stiffer than most cream cheese frostings, however, since it uses a lot more butter. This makes it a lot easier to work with when it comes to frosting the finished cake.
The finished cake is beautiful to look at – and even more beautiful when it is sliced into. You get lemon, vanilla and cream cheese in every bite. It’s a great balance of flavors and the overall feeling of the cake is that it is light and almost refreshing to eat. I kept my decorations simple and just added some white chocolate flowers along the sides of the cake to give it a springtime feel. If you don’t want to add too many decorations, just serve yours as-is and it will be a hit as soon as you cut that first slice.
+Continue Reading
A chess pie is a classic southern recipe. The basic pie has a simple filling of eggs, sugar, butter and flour or cornmeal, and it is often flavored with a little lemon or vanilla. The origin of the name is a bit muddled, and the most cited story is that “chess” is derived from “cheese” because this pie has a texture similar to cheesecake – minus the cheese. Personally, I don’t buy that story because this pie is really nothing like a cheesecake. It is, however, unique and delicious – and definitely seems like the kind of thing that my grandma would have liked to serve, even though she wasn’t from the South.
This Lemon Chess Pie is a straightforward recipe that stays true to the roots of a classic chess pie. The filling is made with eggs, milk, butter and plenty of sugar. There is a little bit of yellow cornmeal added, which gives the custardy pie a hint of texture. I also added lemon zest and fresh lemon juice for flavor. The filling has a nice, creamy texture to it, but has some substance to it that allows the pie to be sliced and served easily. The sugar forms a nice, crisp crust on the top of the custard while the pie bakes, which is a great color contrast for the finished pie. The lemon flavor is pronounced, but it isn’t as tart as you would find in a lemon meringue pie.
I like to think of chess pie as an all purpose pie. It is easy to make and you really need very few ingredients to put one together. I know that I always have all of the filling ingredients on hand. You can use a homemade pie crust or can opt for a premade pie crust, if you want to save time. I really recommend using fresh lemon for the best flavor in this pie, as that zest puts this pie over the top makes it memorable.
+Continue Reading
Lemon and dark chocolate may not always sound like a match made in heaven, but the two flavors are a surprisingly good combination. The bright and tart flavor of the lemon really highlights the richness of chocolate by contrasting with it. You get a lot of chocolate flavor, and a much more refreshing finish from the lemon. Of course, both lemon and dark chocolate are strong flavors, and you need to balance them to get a good mix in the finished product. Sometimes this means adding just a hint of chocolate to a lemon dessert. In this case, it means giving a hint of lemon to a chocolate dessert in these Lemon and Dark Chocolate Brownies.
This recipe definitely delivers a rich chocolate brownie with a pop of lemon to it. I used a favorite recipe for Chocolate Mint Sticks as the inspiration for these brownies, as that recipe introduces mint in a subtle way and seemed like the perfect fit for a lemon twist. The brownies have a fudgy dark chocolate base and they’re topped with a very thin layer of lemon icing, made with fresh lemon juice and lemon zest. They’re finished with a very thin drizzle of chocolate glaze, which really serves to drive home the chocolate flavor and is also a nice way to temper the sweetness of the icing.
The brownies are baked and cooled, before being spread with the lemon icing. The iced brownies should spend a few minutes in the refrigerator to set the frosting, before the chocolate glaze is added to finish them, too. The brownies can then sit at room temperature until the glaze sets up – but it is much quicker to pop them into the fridge or freezer for a few minutes (especially on a hot day!) to make slicing easier and neater. I think that fresh lemon juice and zest is going to deliver the most refreshing lemon flavor for this frosting, but you can substitute milk for the lemon juice and use lemon extract to add lemon flavor. +Continue Reading
