Weekly Dish

Towards the end of February, I get a little antsy. Some might call it cabin fever, but that isn’t really accurate; I get out of the house often enough. No, my end-of-winter jitters stem from the kitchen end of things. I look in the fridge, especially at the end of the week, and I try hard to get excited about finding a creative use for the bunch of carrots languishing in the crisper or the bag of sweet potatoes that seems to never end.

But sometimes I just can’t do it.

And, so, sometimes, instead of concentrating my energies on making a healthful dinner out of the seasonal ingredients I’m desperately trying to still adore (but am secretly wishing to bid goodbye for a time), I make dessert instead.

Please don’t tell anyone.

It’s just that dinner can get a bit routine come March. We eat lots and lots of broccoli: simply steamed and tossed with sauteed garlic, dressed up a little more with cashews and soy sauce, tossed in pasta, folded into an omelet with caramelized onions, pureed with chicken broth and cheddar cheese for soup. And while I love all of these meals — truly, I am thankful that farm-fresh broccoli bears only the slightest resemblance to its tough-stemmed bland cousin carried in supermarkets, and I happily toss the tender, earthy-tasting florets and stalks into all manner of meals. These quick dinners get us through the winter without breaking our budget or sending us calling for take-out.

Yet, at the end of the day, especially fickle, neither winter nor Spring days, I find myself staring into the recesses of my tiny pantry hankering to do something more with my culinary energy. Something with a little more fanfare than broccoli, again.

Last week, when this urge struck, I found a bag of Meyer lemons calling out to me, as they so often do to waken me from my winter slumber, and they asked, quite emphatically, to be made into a simple cake.

Because I grew up in the South, heiress to a whole host of vintage recipes calling for ingredients that I don’t normally buy now that I’m a little fussier about things like chemical additives and artificial sweetners, I particularly love the idea of taking an old recipe and revamping it. I heard about this one, for lemon-lime ice box cake, on NPR’s lovely segment, Kitchen Window, some time in the fall, and when I saw those Meyer lemons, I knew this cake was the one for me.

I wasn’t so concerned with the green that make the original recipe lemon-lime, — I like the striations of yellow, personally — so I stuck with lemons for all of the citrus flavor and left out the food coloring. And, while I’m sure run-of-the-mill lemons would work perfectly fine, if the season has left you any Meyers, their tempered tartness and hints of sweet florals make this cake truly irresistible.

So irresistible, in fact, that it might just get me from broccoli to asparagus. Maybe even, come fall, I’ll be wishing for winter days and the lemons they bring. That, my friends, would be a powerful cake.

Happy Easter to one and all!

Lemon Icebox Cake
Just a single layer, topped with a simple whipped cream topping, this cake’s humble appearance belies its big flavor. Which, to my mind, makes it an even better candidate for taking to an event, like an Easter dinner — no one will expect the buttery, lemony explosion as they take the first bite, and you, the humble baker will get all the praise. Not that that’s why you bake for others, of course, but just in case it’s an added bonus you appreciate.

A couple of ingredient notes: I find measurements that suggest how many lemons you need for the amounts of juice and zest to vary so widely that they are unhelpful; I measured the quantities of both as I used them, but especially for the zest, it’s okay to estimate. Fresh lemon juice is absolutely essential; yes, it takes time to zest and squeeze all of those lemons, but the result is well worth the effort.

As for the curd, a high-quality store-bought version would probably be fine; the original recipe calls for stirring it with a little water, so that it’s the right consistency to pour over the cake. I found that the texture of homemade curd, especially just after it’s made, worked perfectly.

Lemon Ice Box Cake

For the cake:

3 cups cake flour
3 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 cup butter, at room temp
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (whole milk works too)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 t. grated lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside.

In an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and continue to beat until the mixture has doubled in volume.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and with a rubber spatula, fold in the flour mixture and the buttermilk, alternating by thirds, until both have been incorporated. Stir in the juice and zest.

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan, and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until just moist (not wet) in the center. Turn the cake onto a rack to cool.

For the curd:

1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 T. grated lemon zest
4 large eggs, beaten
2 T. butter, diced

Whisk together the juice, sugar, zest, and eggs in a small saucepan. Stir constantly over medium-low heat, until the mixture thickens and coats a spoon. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter. When the cake has cooled slightly (it’s fine if it’s still warm, just not oven-hot), poke holes all over it with the bottom of a wooden spoon. I like to poke holes of varying depths — for some, go all the way through to the bottom, for others, just a prick in the top, and then, some in between. Pour the curd over the punctured cake, allowing it to seep into the holes. I had about 3/4 cup of curd left over. Let the cake stand while you whip the topping.

For the topping:

8 ounces mascarpone cheese, at room temp
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 t. grated lemon zest
4 T. lemon juice

Whip the cream on high until soft peaks form. Add the powdered sugar, zest, and mascarpone; beat on medium-low until just combined. With the mixer running, slowly pour in the lemon juice. Spread the topping over the whole cake.

If you beat the mixture too long, the mascarpone will curdle, but that’s okay; it will smooth out some when you spread it on. And if it gets really lumpy and ugly, it will still taste good, but if you’re concerned about the appearance, whip some extra cream by itself to spread on top (like I did).

You can serve it warm — straight from the pan — or refrigerate and serve it cold. We liked it equally well both ways. It cuts into neater pieces once it’s been chilled.

–Adapted from April Fulton’s adapted recipe on NPR’s Kitchen Window 

Hey everybody. Happy New Year. Really, I mean that; I hope you won’t interpret my post title as an anti-New Year sentiment.

Because I actually love the idea of starting off the first day of the first month of a new year by looking ahead, thinking through goals I’d like to accomplish, dreaming about possible plans I’d like to make, anticipating what the future holds with ambition and hope and optimism.

But, for me, the looking back is more important, if only because it colors the lenses through which I see my future with a tint of needed realism. Glancing back over the past 12 months to see where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and how I’ve spent my time reveals that if I learned anything in 2007, it is that I absolutely cannot predict what my life will look like under any given circumstance.

For instance, everyone says that having a baby changes everything. But, I found, until you have one yourself, living under your roof, occupying space in your routine, working her way into every second of every one of your days, you absolutely cannot imagine how those changes will affect you personally. Yes, it is a universal truth that babies change your life. So many people told me that. But I think it might also be true that how a baby changes each person’s life is remarkably different, uniquely tailored to each individual parent and each individual baby. And no one told me that part. For, in January of 2007, when I looked ahead to May and tried to picture our life with a baby, I could not possibly have imagined the reality of Josie in all her Josie-ness. Perhaps that’s why we are almost forced to speak of parenting in cliches, because the experience, with its ever-nuanced individualism, evades articulation.

And still, here I am, trying to articulate what it has meant to be a mom, or more precisely, what it has meant for me to be a mother to this one little baby girl named Josie.

And that is perhaps the most surprising thing to me of all: that in the midst of the busiest I have ever been, I feel compelled to carve out at least a few moments here and there to get into my kitchen and make something and to return to this little space and write about it. Mostly about the food, but also, as it is impossible for me to separate food from how I understand myself, about how I am making sense of my life in these busy days. I may not be the most regular of bloggers, (here is where I am not promising to do better because who knows if that will be possible or not?), or the most consistent of commenters on other blogs (here is where I tell you that I would so, so like to promise to do better because I really do read lots and lots of your blogs when I find the time, but almost always it is after the commenting conversations are long over), or the most reliable of responders to the very nice comments left here (and here I am having to use every ounce of self-control I can muster not to promise, but just to say that I am making a concerted effort to do better on this front, to jump into the comment conversation, even if a few days late, even if just to say, “Hey Everybody, thanks for saying you were here. It really does mean a lot, and it is rude of me not to say so.”). But I am so very grateful for every one of you who take the time to read the words I put out there, to try the recipes I bring you, and especially to communicate with me about what you’ve read or tried.

My gratitude is really all I feel capable of promising at the beginning of this year, as I hate the thought of making promises I won’t be able to keep. We all have to start somewhere, though, and one could do worse than committing to feel thankful.

Now, it seems I promised you an egg white recipe.

If you made the orange butter cookies, you will find yourself with 4 lonely egg whites with nowhere to go. I hate to see much of anything go to waste, but especially egg whites, because it is so easy to whip them into something lovely. Like a meringue. If you have a pie to top, you can certainly make meringue for that purpose, but I like to make little meringue shells to have an easy dessert on hand for dinner guests. Once the meringues are baked, slice some strawberries, or top with a dollop of lemon curd or bittersweet chocolate, and you have a gorgeous presentation in a snap. They look like little pillows of cloud or piles of snow, and they crunch with the bite of sugar without any heaviness — almost like sweetened air, concentrated into a crispy white case. They won’t be the most complicated dessert on the table, but with the right filling, they can be quite pretty (unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of a filled one because all of mine got eaten.) At least you’ll have turned leftover egg whites into something pretty and sweet, a sort of blank canvas to fill as you like. Sort of like a new year. I won’t make any promises about what yours will turn out to be like, but here’s hoping it’s filled with many good things. Happy 2008, everyone!

Meringue Shells

–adapted from The All New Joy of Cooking

The one rule for making meringues is not to step away from the mixer. The texture changes quickly, and you don’t want to miss the right time to add the sugar or stop beating. I also have had better luck with the crispy texture I like on cold, dry days, which is perhaps why I always end up making meringues in winter. They will keep in an airtight container for about a week before they lose their crunch. My favorite way to serve them is by filling the cavity with sliced strawberries, drizzling a little strawberry jam on top, and finishing with a spoonful of plain whipped cream, but fill with whatever strikes your fancy. They are versatile enough to handle a lot of variations, just be careful with overly sweet fillings — the meringues themselves provide most of the sweetener you’ll need.

1/2 cup egg whites (the 4 whites from my 4 large eggs measured exactly 1/2 cup)
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup granulated sugar, whirred in the food processor for a couple of minutes
Preheat your oven to 225 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar on medium speed, until soft peaks form and the whites are all foamy, like this:

Now, turn your mixer to high, and sprinkle in the sugar, a tablespoon at a time, very gradually, until the mixture holds stiff peaks and becomes very shiny, like this:

Now, spoon out puffs of meringue onto the baking sheet, carving out a hollow with the back of your spoon, so the shells look like this:

Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, depending on how you like the texture. David likes his to be soft in the center still, sort of marshmallowy, so I tend to take them out after 1 1/2 hours. If you want them very crispy all the way through, leave them for the full 2 hours. You can also turn the oven off and leave them in there to cool and dry out even more. This recipe will make about a dozen fist-sized shells. They will keep in an airtight container for at least a week, longer if it’s cold and dry outside (at least in my experience).

By nature, I am not a baker. Bakers, see, are precise. And organized. And neat. Rule-followers, usually. I am a cook. Intuitive, messy, and definitely a spirit-of-the-recipe kind of girl.

But, oh how I love to bake. Yes, this seeming paradox sometimes manifests itself in a great big doughy mess — cakes, especially, sometimes go terribly, terribly wrong under my erratic hand. Sometimes, though, every so often, a recipe for a baked good just feels right. As if I could do it little harm, even if I tried. These are the sorts of recipes that fall into my kitchen routine quietly, and before I know it, I’ve made the same kind of cookie or muffin or bready item a dozen times, and by some happy accident, they have turned out deliciously every time.

I first made these sandy butter cookies last holiday baking season, after I read about them on Orangette. Molly is right — this is quite an unassuming cookie, nothing much to look at. But it is exactly the sort of cookie that you can pile high on a plate, and before you know it, the plate has only tiny little crumbs to show for all your baking work. Left out, these cookies just get eaten, that is all there is to it.

I made these a number of times through the course of citrus season last year — I love them with Meyer lemon zest, as the original recipe calls for, but as you know, I have a supply of orange zest needing to be used. Orange zest marries so marvelously with plain old butter and sugar, I thought it would land happily in these simple little cookies.

Everyone has her own form of procrastination, and mine happens to be baking. So last week, when I should have been working on the semester’s final projects, I decided to make cookies for my students to eat while they took their final exam. David thought this recipe was an odd choice — he says these cookies are too sophisticated for college students’ palates. Perhaps he’s right, but as happens when they’re at our house, the platter piled high with cookies sat empty as my last student turned in her stapled stack of papers. As she walked out the door and wished me happy holidays, she turned around and said, “Oh, by the way, those cookies are good.”

Indeed they are. Simple, yes. But the separate flavors — orange here, a kick of sugar crystal there, finished with a bite of salt — come together after the crumbly texture has dissolved to make you want to take just one more bite.

Before you know it, you’ll be itching to make them again. Perhaps, like they have done with me, these cookies will work their way into your holiday baking ritual, and before you know it, you’ll have made them a dozen times. Happily they make great gifts. Or so I tell myself when I’m trying to remember what happened to all those little buttery disks.

Citrus Sables

–Amanda Hesser, via Orangette

Molly says you can bake and freeze them to give away, and that would be a lovely thing to do if you could keep from eating them all. That hasn’t happened around here yet, but I’m planning to wrap up the next batch to send with a couple of holiday care packages. They might not mail terribly well — they crumble a lot — but maybe if wrapped really well, they’ll do okay. I have frozen the wrapped cylinders of batter with good success; in fact, for a while, I kept at least one log of dough in the freezer for good measure — just in case a rainy cookie day appeared out of the cold, clear blue sky.

I usually hate recipes that call for only egg yolks or whites. Once I tried these, though, and kept making them, I had to think of something to do with all those whites, as I can’t stand to throw them out. Hang onto yours and stay tuned — a 4-egg-white recipe is coming your way shortly.

Other than that, the recipe is pretty straightforward, and I haven’t changed it much. I used demerara sugar in place of the turbinado, (Do you know demerara sugar? It is a lovely, lovely molasses-esque coarse sugar that I have grown to adore. They have it at my local grocer’s, and if you come across some, buy it. You’ll be happy you did.) and substituted orange zest for the Meyer lemon.

One urging — don’t skimp on the salt, and whatever you do, don’t use plain old table salt. What happens when you stir the coarse salt in at the end is that the granules hold their shape rather than dissolving into the batter, so the flavor is concentrated in tiny little bursts (rather than making the cookies salty). If you’re skeptical, at least try it with the full 3/4 teaspoon. It will look like a lot, but once you bite into a cookie, I think you’ll be glad you did.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
2 T. orange zest, grated (or other citrus zest)
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 t. coarse sea salt
4 large egg yolks
1/3 cup coarse sugar, like demerara

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.

In a small bowl, combine the baking powder and flour. Toss in the orange zest and stir until it’s coated with the flour mixture.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugars with the paddle attachment until smooth and creamy. With the mixer running, add the egg yolks. Scrape down the sides of the bowl if you need to to make sure the egg is fully incorporated into the creamed butter and sugar.

Turn the mixer down to low and add the flour mixture, a little at a time, just until the flour is no longer noticeable. Stir in the salt.

Divide the dough into 4 equal portions. Drop each portion onto a piece of plastic wrap, and using the wrap to work the dough, form it into a long, slender log. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

Now the cookies are ready to slice and bake; I’ve left them in the fridge for as long as a week, or you can freeze the logs of dough by wrapping them in foil or dropping them into a plastic freezer bag.

When you’re ready to bake, spread the coarse sugar onto a plate. Roll each log of dough in the sugar, pressing with your fingers to make sure it sticks. Slice disks of equal thickness (about 1/4 inch) and place on the baking sheet. They will spread out a little bit, so leave a little space between them. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the bottoms take on just a hint of color and the edges are beginning to turn golden. Makes somewhere between 6 and 7 dozen cookies, depending on the size of your slices.