Raspberry Lemon Bars

I was looking for a recipe for cooking club the other week, when I ran across this one. It didn't fit the theme for that week, but that didn't stop me from book-marking it, eager to try it as soon as I could. While I've always been a fan of lemon bars, this version is now by far my favorite. I was worried that the lemon flavor might overpower the raspberry, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much both were present in the end product.

The crust was satisfactory, but didn't add much flavor to the dessert. This was a good thing, because it allowed the lemon-raspberry filling to be center-stage. When it came time to pour the raspberry-lemon filling over the crust, the mixture was extremely watery, so I was slightly skeptical. Not to worry though, the filling did actually set, and in fact became the perfect consistency. 

Raspberry Lemonade Bars
Yield: about 24-30 bars*

Ingredients:


For the crust:
2¼ sticks (18 tbsp.) unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt

For the raspberry lemon layer:
3 cups sugar
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tbsp. lemon zest
¼ tsp. salt
3 cups frozen raspberries, thawed
6 large egg whites
2 large eggs
1 1/3 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

*I halved the recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with a slightly reduced baking time. 

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.  Line a 9 x 13-inch baking pan with parchment paper. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar.  Beat on medium-high speed until smooth, 1-2 minutes. With the mixer on low speed, mix in the flour and salt just until incorporated. Add the dough to the prepared baking pan. Press into an even layer over the bottom of the pan. Bake for about 25 minutes or until light golden brown. Remove from the oven, maintaining the temperature.

While the crust is baking, make the top layer. Combine the sugar, flour, lemon zest and salt in a large bowl and whisk to blend. Add the raspberries to a fine mesh sieve and press through, mashing with a spatula, to extract as much juice and pulp as possible, straining out the seeds. Add the egg whites and eggs to the bowl with the dry ingredients and whisk well to blend. Whisk in the raspberry puree and lemon juice until smooth.

Pour the mixture over the crust and bake until the center is just set and not longer jiggles when gently shaken, about 35-40 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool to room temperature. Cover and chill well in the refrigerator, at least 2 hours. When ready to serve, use the parchment paper to lift the bars from the pan. Place on a cutting board and slice into bars. Dust the tops with confectioners’ sugar if desired.

Source: slightly adapted from Annie's Eats.

Happy Halloween! Eyeball Cupcakes

To celebrate all things ghoulish and creepy on Halloween, I decided to make eyeball cupcakes. Freaky, right?

 I started with a Red Velvet cupcake. Making the eyeballs was surprisingly easy.

 Step 1: Cover the cupcakes in a smooth white frosting.

 Step 2: Using a frosting bag (small-medium sized tip), make a circle in the middle of the cupcake, the "iris"  using frosting that you've dyed blue.

 Step 3: Also using a frosting bag (with a very small tip), pipe the "veins" around the blue "iris", using frosting that you've dyed red. Finish off by melting a little chocolate and adding a dot in the middle as the "pupil."























If you don't have a frosting bag, you can probably use the gel decorating icing in the tube.

I got the idea from the blog Dinner: A Love Story.

Happy Birthday Papa!

On their wedding day, my dad asked my mom for only one thing. My dad told my mom that he had had a cake on all of his birthdays, and would like a cake on all of his birthdays to come. This year as a gift, I wanted to bake him his very own cake. 

This recipe is very similar to my Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes, but instead its in cake form. When assembling the cake, you are supposed to slice the layers so that you end up with four layers, but I was running out of time so I skipped this step. If I hadn't, the cake would have been better since the caramel would have soaked into the cake.

I finished the cake of with a dark chocolate caramel ganache, which was extremely rich. I prefer this recipe in cupcake form, but I want to try this again with more time. 

I used this recipe.

Peach Crumble Bars

It has taken me a long time to get this up here, but here they are, finally. 

The other week for Cooking Club, the theme was fruit. I had a few frozen bags of peaches hiding in the back of my freezer just waiting to be used, so I found a recipe for Peach Crumble Bars. 

The recipe starts with the crumble, which has a satisfying buttery flavor. Once you grease your pan, you have to press about half of the dough into the bottom to create a flat base layer. 

I used frozen peaches, which worked just fine, though the recipe calls for fresh cut peaches. I love the combination of nutmeg with peaches in this recipe. The peaches go on top of the base. 

Crumble the remaining half of the dough on top of the peaches.

                       

I was expecting chunks of peaches in the final product, but during the baking process, they lost their shape and became softer. It wasn't bad, but I wish they had the texture of the peaches. 

The original recipe uses a 9x13 inch pan, but I only had an 8x8.  To accommodate the size difference, I cut the recipe in half, which worked out perfectly. While this was  not my favorite outcome, I want to play with different fruits in the future and see if I can perfect the recipe. 

Eggs in a Basket

I'm usually not a huge breakfast fan, but who doesn't love lazily waking up on a Sunday morning and beginning the day with a delicious brunch? For my Sunday Brunch I decided to cook Eggs in a Basket (also known as bird's nest, eggs in a hole etc.) This is a recipe I had always heard about but never imagined attempting. That was until one of my friends told me just how delicious it was and how easy to make. It was so easy, she said, that she often made this for herself for breakfast during her busy morning schedule! 

First you start by cutting the hole out of the bread. You can basically use any kind of bread, but I opted for peasant bread because I love the texture. Remember to save the piece you cut out! It turns into one of the most heavenly things I've ever tasted.



Then you melt butter in your pan and fry the piece of bread and the hole for about a minute before adding the egg, along with a little salt and pepper. You will eventually flip the entire piece of toast with the egg once it is mostly set.

Rosemary made it taste even better!

I like my eggs runny, so I let it cook on the other side for a only little longer before sliding it on to the plate. The hole, which you fry along with the toast, ends up being perfectly toasted and extremely buttery, an excellent accent with a sprig of grapes. Overall, a delicious brunch! 

For this easy recipe, just follow the link here.

Apple Cider Doughnuts

It's finally autumn! While I'm sad to be leaving behind those hazy summer days, there's something about autumn weather that makes me think of apples, warm colors and new beginnings. What celebrates that more than apple cider doughnuts?

The doughnuts before they were fried. 

Making the actual dough was seriously simple. It was the repetitive rolling and chilling and cutting that took so long. I bought a circular cookie cutter instead of a doughnut cutter and cut the holes out by hand.  

The doughnuts after they were fried. They rose a lot while they cooked.

I'm usually terrified of frying foods, but this was surprisingly easy. Once the oil or shortening is heated up, everything cooks relatively quickly. In fact I burned a few because I didn't turn them in time.

The delicious glaze!

The recipe gives you two options for topping; an apple cider glaze and cinnamon sugar. I opted to try both. I've never tried a glaze for this kind of doughnut, but I prefered it. I usually have them with the cinnamon sugar.

Cinnamon sugar--the usual. 

All in all, the doughnuts didn't turn out quite as light and fluffy as I expected, but I still had a lot of fun trying! Thanks again to smitten kitchen for the recipe.

I'm Back!

I know I've been missing for the summer months, but now that it's fall and I'm finally back home, I'm getting back into the kitchen! I was at my camp this past summer, working as a Counselors Aide to kids, sleeping in platform tents in the woods. While I had the best summer of my life, I did miss the opportunity to work in my kitchen. 

From Savy Cafe 

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