Lemon Whoopie Pies Two Ways

I’m part of an online baking community, and this month, the monthly challenge was to take a box mix and transform it. I’ve been watching a lot of Chopped lately, so I was definitely interested in seeing what I could do.

I got the idea to make Whoopie Pies, though not the traditional black and white kind. (Chocolate cake with vanilla icing is actually my least favorite.) I picked up a box of Organic Lemon Cake mix at Whole Foods early in the month, and it sat in the pantry for quite a while.

Today I finally got into gear. I used a recipe I found online to turn the cake mix into whoopie pie mix, but the batter really looked too runny to me. Hoping for some kind of miracle, I spooned some onto the parchment. They came out thin and flat, just as I’d expected. So, I altered the recipe with some baking powder and extra flour, and then they came out perfectly.

I went ahead and assembled my whoopie pies, and I let my partner and my little brother eat some of the failed flat ones. I still had four or five of them left, though, and I had some beautiful, ripe peaches from our farm share. I sliced a peach super thin, went to the garden and got some lemon basil, and made a second beautiful dessert.

If you want to make the Napolean variation, just omit the extra flour and baking powder. Use a cup or a cookie cutter to obtain uniform shapes, then layer the thin pastry with slivers of peaches and whipped cream or custard. Garnish with lemon basil to bring together these amazing flavors.

For the whoopie pies, I chose to make them a bit smaller than they traditionally are. I find the larger ones to be sugar-headache inducing! For the filling, I made one buttercream, then split it and flavored half with raspberry and half with lavender.

Ingredients
For the whoopie pies
1 box of lemon cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup oil
1/3 cup flour (or til the batter is thickened; for whoopie pies only)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (for whoopie pies only)

For the filling
1 stick butter
2 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 teaspoon lavender extract
2 tablespoons seedless raspberry jam

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a mixer or a large bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, water, oil, flour, and baking powder. Stir until smooth.

Drop the batter onto the parchment lined cookie sheet. I used about 1 tablespoon for each; you can make them bigger, but they may need an extra couple minutes to cook. Try to make them round!

Bake for 5-8 minutes. Carefully peel back the parchment and let the rounds cool on a rack.

Meanwhile, make the buttercream filling. In a mixer, combine the butter and sugar until a smooth frosting is formed. Add a few drops of water or milk if necessary. If making two flavors, divide the filling in half. In one bowl, add the lavender extract (to taste) and mix well. In another bowl, add the raspberry jam to taste and mix well.

Using a spoon or a piping bag (I used a star tip on the raspberry ones and an angled tip on the lavender ones, just for cuteness), fill in some frosting on the flat side of one of the whoopie pies. Add another one on top for the lid. Continue making the little sandwiches, using one flavor for some and the other for others. If you feel inspired, roll the edges in sprinkles for an extra sweet look.

Keep refrigerated. They also apparently freeze well!

Fresh Fava Bean Dip (with Garlic Scapes)

Today we found ourselves with both some beautiful fava beans and some garlic scapes in our CSA share. Last year when we got fava beans, we grilled them, which was awesome! Ever since we started getting them, though, I’ve been wanting to turn them into a scrumptious dip. I wanted something easy, simple, and delicious, so I did a quick google search. I found Fresh Fava Bean Dip with Rosemary on the blog What Julia Ate. It was a super simple, guesstimating quantities type of recipe, which was just what I wanted. I scooped up a bit on a cracker to try, and it’s yummy. The fava flavor is very accommodating, so feel free to sub in another herb.

I’m saving it for tomorrow since we’d already begun cooking rice & beans for our meal, but I’m really looking forward to this divine dip.

Lemon (Not Poppyseed) Ginger Cake

A few weeks ago some of our dearest friends, Micah & Casey [of Casey's Chai Cake], had an engagement party, thrown by some of our other wonderful friends, Kai & Sarah and their new baby! The party was on a Sunday, and Micah actually came to hang out with me on the Saturday beforehand since Casey was busy with some other stuff. They recently moved several hours away from us, so it was absolutely awesome to just get to hang out all day.

One of the things I’d been planning to do that day, though, (before I knew he was coming) was to bake a bunch of stuff. Our winter farm share pickup is usually on Wednesdays, but there had been so much snow that week that it had been rescheduled to Saturday. Since Charlie was working, it was going to be a huge hassle for me to get there, but, the internet saved the day. A quick post to Facebook asking if anyone would be in the area where the share was yielded a friend from high school willing to snag it and bring it over to this side of the river with her, and, well, that was definitely deserving of a batch of Dressmaker’s Double Stout Cookies.

And, of course, I was planning to bake a cake for the engagement party! I hadn’t yet completely decided on what to make, and I considered attempting to pull the wool over Micah’s eyes and pretending that the cake was for something else, but instead, I decided to get his input on what sounded good. Since he’s such a cheery, helpful person, I even had a kitchen assistant and, bless his heart, a dishwasher.

We decided on a Lemon Poppyseed Cake, since I had either a bunch of lemons or a bunch of oranges floating around, and lemon was the victor. I started stirring and mixing while Micah rounded little balls of chocolate stout cookie dough onto baking sheets.

And then, when it was almost ready… I couldn’t find the poppyseeds.

I knew I had poppyseeds. More than one container of them, in fact, as I’d bought some in a package and then found them in a different package in bulk. Unfortunately, when you live somewhere that you’re not the only single person in the entire house, sometimes things get moved or tossed, and despite searching high and low in every freakin’ cabinet… there are no poppyseeds to be found.

The weather was still a bit crummy, and we’d already gone to the store once, so Micah and I decided to make it a… Lemon NOT Poppyseed Cake. I started to rattle around in the cabinets and came up with some candied ginger that I bought for some cookies but rarely have use for. A new cake was taking shape.

I minced the candied ginger as best I could (it’s a sticky, stick job!) and added a bit of powdered ginger to the batter to meld with the lemon and cardamom flavors that were already dancing around.

The cake was a huge success, with people eating piece after piece, and asking for the recipe. So, here it is!

Ingredients

3/4 cup oil
1 1/3 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream
3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon salt
zest of three lemons
juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons minced candied ginger

Directions

Sorry I don’t have a picture of this one! It’s for a 10-cup bundt pan, and I used my Heritage Bundt Pan, so it looks a lot like my Counting Cups Cake.

Adjust oven racks – you’ll be baking this on the bottom rack. Preheat oven to 325*F. Grease and lightly flour a 10 cup bundt pan.

In a stand mixer, combine the oil and the white sugar. Add the eggs one at a time. Stir. Add the lemon juice. Stir.

In a separate, medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cardamom, powdered ginger and mix completely.

Alternate adding the dry mixture and the sour cream to the oil/sugar mixture a little at a time until they are all completely mixed together. Fold in the lemon zest and the candied ginger.

Pour into the prepared bundt pan. Bake on the bottom rack at 325*F for about an hour, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Winter BBQ for the win!

So, if I haven’t made it obvious by now, my partner Charlie loves grilling. And when he got a fancy grill for his birthday last May, there was joking talk of shoveling the snow off the deck in the dead of winter and grilling even then.

Well, I didn’t underestimate that sentiment, but I don’t think anyone expected that it would be this much snow, since we’ve had a metric ton. But, he had a hankering for grilled food, and he had the day off for the Lunar New Year, so today, I was treated to a winter BBQ!

Here’s Charlie out on the deck.

(“Smile for the camera, Charlie!” gets us a thumbs up with an oven mitt in lieu of gloves.)

And just to give you an idea of how much snow is on the deck, this is the vantage point of the photographer (me!) from the sliding glass door, trying to keep the cat inside (who for some reason thinks he wants to go out – he doesn’t).

(Charlie ultimately decided to just wade through the snow in his boots instead of shoveling off the deck. It was that kind of day. If we have company for the next winter BBQ, we’ll probably clear it off.)

Anyway, while Charlie was outside in thirty degree weather, I was inside marinating tempeh. Because of some fun (and thankfully temporary) medication switches, I’m really trying to watch my sodium this week, so I decided to step in and make my own marinade. Charlie does an amazing job at this and is usually in charge, but is occasionally a bit more heavy handed with the soy sauce than I’d choose to be.

I pulled out my balsamic vinegar for most of the flavor, then brought in just a bit of soy sauce for balance. And, I was sure to measure so that I knew what I was getting in to (whereas our normal marinade making experiments are usually… “a little of this and a little of that”).

Ingredients

1 brick o’ tempeh (ok, an 8oz package), sliced into 4 “cutlets”
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
a squeeze of fresh lemon – perhaps a teaspoon
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 sprigs fresh rosemary

Directions

Mix the vinegar, soy sauce, oil, lemon, and garlic powder thoroughly in a shallow dish wide enough for all of the tempeh to lie flat in. Let the rosemary, however sad and leggy it may be from lack of adequate sunshine at this point, sit in the bowl for a few minutes to release some flavor. Get the tempeh good and soggy in the marinade, let sit in the fridge for five or ten minutes (or longer, but that’s all I had since the grill was already going) and then flip over, ensuring an even coating. Refrigerate for a few more minutes, then grill until warm through and the edges begin to blacken.

Dahl with Spinach Rice

When I was growing up, we never ate Indian food. We actually hardly ever ate any regional foods except for Italian (part of my heritage) and Chinese takeout (when we were sick of pizza). I didn’t try sushi until high school, hadn’t had Korean food until college, and even many European specialties never crossed my plate until I traveled there.

One type of food I was really hesitant about was Indian food. I’d figured out at some point during my life that I don’t like what we traditionally think of when we say “curry,” and for a while, I was one of the folks that thought Indian food=curry, which is totally incorrect. The great thing about Indian food is that there’s often a ton of vegetarian options, so really, once I figured out what I liked, I was golden. (I just have to watch out for the super spicy stuff! I absolutely can’t do really spicy things – I think it has to do with sensory overload in relation to my fibromyalgia.)

My favorite Indian dish is dahl, which is a spiced (but not too spicy) lentil dish, usually served over rice. Sometimes it’s got some veggies like cauliflower or spinach in it, though it comes plain, too. Where we live, there aren’t many Indian restaurants, and the ones here are kind of pricey, so it’s a rare treat to be able to go out for Indian food. Funny enough, we’re actually kind of broke this month since we just bought a used car from a friend, so we turned to our bulk foods like lentils and rice instead of expensive fake meats. And then… our attempt at dahl was born.

Since I was busy baking cookies for a cookie contest, Charlie took the helm on this recipe. And, as usual when Charlie cooks, he estimates a bit more than I do (since he’s not used to writing down exact quantities for a blog, haha), so you might need to adjust these all a tiny bit to taste.

Ingredients: (Dahl)

sesame oil to coat pan
1/2 onion, chopped finely
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup lentils, soaked in water for 45 minutes
1 1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon corriander
1 teaspoon tumeric
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayanne
2 small tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons lime juice
dash cilantro
salt and black pepper to taste

Directions: (Dahl)

In a medium stock pot, saute the onion, ginger, and garlic in sesame oil until the onions are translucent. Add tomatoes and cook for one minute. While stirring, add the stock and lentils. Add the spices, including the salt and pepper. Cook covered for 20 minutes. Cook uncovered until it reaches desired consistency (we like it less runny). Stir in lime juice. Serve over over spinach rice and/or with naan.

Ingredients: Spinach Rice

4 cups of cooked white or basmati rice
1/2 onion, chopped finely
4 cloves of garlic, microplaned to create a paste
1 tablespoon ginger, microplaned to create a paste
2 tablespoons lemon
2 cups of spinach, finely chiffonaded
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground corriander seed
salt to taste

Directions: (Spinach Rice)

Saute the onion in a bit of oil in a large pan. When the onion is translucent, add the garlic and ginger pastes and cook very briefly. Add the spinach, lemon, cumin, and corriander seed, and cook for about a minute. Add the rice and stir. Salt to taste.

Earl Grey Tea Cakes

(Shh, they’re vegan!)

I have just realized the tragedy that has occurred. These cakes never got posted. I made them ages ago!

I’d made Casey’s Chai Cake when we had company because I thought it would be more popular than the slightly odder sounding Earl Grey cakes, but we have a fabulously fragrant Earl Grey that I’ve been dying to bake with. After I made the Chai cake, I knew I had to do it, pronto!

I made these in a new (to me) silicone baking pan my mom gave me since she never uses it. I’ve never used silicone pans before, and it was a muffin tin that was very deep. I’ve been very skeptical about silicone before, but they popped right out and looked adorable! I’m very happy to add this to my collection and I’m sure I’ll use it often.

I had some soymilk to use up, so I took the opportunity to make these vegan, and Charlie had no idea until I told him. Be sure that if you’re going to glaze these, you use the Earl Grey infused soymilk as the liquid for the frosting, otherwise, the somewhat subtle taste of the tea will be lost underneath the sweetness of the plain glaze! Be careful about your tea selection – you want an Earl Grey that has a lot of bergamot in it.

Love how the blueberries got the glaze all pink!

Ingredients

Cakes
1/2 cup Earth Balance
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2-3 tablespoons natural sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup Earl Grey Soymilk* (I used vanilla soymilk as a base – you may want to add 1 tsp vanilla if you’re using plain milk or plain soymilk)
1 tablespoon commercial egg replacer (or milled flax + 2 tablespoons warm water)
1 teaspoon Earl Grey loose leaf tea leaves, finely ground with mortar & pestle
dash of lemon juice

*To make Earl Grey Soymilk, heat 1 3/4 cups milk in a saucepan on low-medium heat. When bubbles form around the edge of the pot, add about 9 grams of loose leaf tea (about 3 teaspoons) in a filter or 3-4 tea bags. Let steep for 5 minutes. Cool.

Glaze
1/4 cup Earl Grey Soymilk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice (or to taste)
1 cup confectioners sugar (or to desired consistency)
1/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries (optional, for decoration)

Directions

Cream the Earth Balance and natural sugar together in a medium or large bowl. Since the ratio wasn’t totally even, it won’t come out perfectly creamed, so just give it a good mix. In a separate small bowl, mix the milled flax and warm water together until it gets gooey, then add that to the sugar mixture. Add the dash of lemon juice.

In a separate bowl, mix the whole wheat pastry flour, the baking powder, and the salt together. Slowly add a bit of this dry mixture to the creamed mixture, stirring constantly or mixing with the paddle attachment of your stand mixer. Alternate from time to time with some of the 1 1/4 cups of Earl Grey soymilk. Add a little of each until they are all mixed in. Stir in the Earl Grey tea leaves.

Pour into the silicone baking pans. You can use prepared cupcake pans with liners or that have been greased if you don’t have silicone pans.

Bake at 375*F for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let the cakes cool for several minutes before removing them from the silicone molds.

Meanwhile, make the glaze. Add the remaining Earl Grey soymilk, lemon juice, and confectioner’s sugar until you reach the desired consistency. Making the glaze too thick with confectioner’s sugar may take away from the Earl Grey flavor. If you desire a super thick glaze, you may want to consider using bergamot extract.

Dip the tops of the cakes into the bowl of glaze and garnish with blueberries if desired.

Lemon Blueberry Chiffon Cake with Lavender Glaze

Oh, my, I’m so behind on posting recipes. The good news is, I have been doing some good cooking, though, and my arthritis and fibromyalgia have been not tooo terrible, so I’ve been having a pretty active life, as well (leaving me less time to hang out in front of the computer!).

This post really deserves to get online, though, as it’s from all the way back in July, and I know that a lot of people really enjoyed it. This was the second cake that I made for my own birthday! I usually have a yellow cake with chocolate frosting (this year, it was a lightly flavored Cardamom Lime Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting) for my birthday, but I also love, love, love the combination of lemon and lavender together. In fact, my favorite cupcake in probably the entire world is a seasonal cupcake from Sweet Avenue Bake Shop that has lemon filling and lavender icing. Don’t tell, but I’ve got one hoarded away in my freezer now that the season for them has past.

Anyway, lemon and lavender go together in an absolutely gorgeous way. Many people at my party were kind of like, “Huh? Lavender? You can eat that?” and yes, friends, you most certainly can. Bo wanted to put the lavender glaze in his coffee, and Kira wanted to have it made into an ice cream (this is something I am definitely considering). So, the glaze was no problem for me to come up with, but a chiffon cake… that I’d never really worked on before.

I based my recipe for the chiffon cake mostly off of a Betty Crocker recipe, only I (who can guess?) reduced the sugar and bumped up the lemon flavor. Chiffon cake is very light and airy, though, so I didn’t want to reduce the sugar too much for fear of losing the texture, and luckily, it came out just fine. Oh… and feel free to throw some cream of tartar in those egg whites like Betty does – I didn’t have any in the house.

I used little umbrellas to decorate this cake… it seems to have been a day for ridiculous decorations. I bought these at the party store where I also bought an amazingly awesome shark piñata. Mmmhmmm.

Ingredients Cake

2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 tablespoons lemon zest
juice of 1 lemon
7 egg yolks
8 egg whites
1/3 cup blueberries

Lavender Glaze
1/4 cup dried lavender
3/4 cup milk
drop or two of red food coloring (if desired)
confectioners sugar to desired consistency

Directions

Move oven rack to lowest position. Heat oven to 325°F. In large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Beat in cold water, oil, vanilla, lemon zest and egg yolks until smooth.

In large bowl, beat egg whites with electric mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. (I cannot believe how awesome this works out with my stand mixer!) Gradually pour egg yolk mixture over beaten egg whites, folding with rubber spatula just until blended. Pour into ungreased 10-inch angel food (tube) cake pan (I used a silicone bundt pan). Roll blueberries in flour and drop them into the batter.

Bake about 1 hour 15 minutes or until top springs back when touched lightly. Immediately turn pan upside down onto heatproof funnel or bottle. Let hang until completely cool, about 2 hours. Loosen side of cake with knife or long, metal spatula; remove from pan.

In a small saucepan, simmer milk and lavender until the lavender is infused in the milk. The milk should turn a purple or pink color and be very fragrant. Strain the lavender from the milk. In a small mixing bowl, add confectioners sugar a bit at a time until the glaze thickens to desired consistency. I left the glaze thin so that the lavender really came out and so that it could soak into the cake.

Harvest Fruit Crisp

*Note: I don’t usually consume much of the sweets I’ve made. Mostly, I bake for other people. This crisp, however, is so delicious… well… let’s just say that I won’t have to worry about distributing any at work in order for it all to get eaten. This is another recipe with the sugar cut back, but make sure you taste your apples – if they’re very bland, you may want to add a bit more sugar.

Today was our last farm share delivery of the season, and we got yet another harvest of apples. As I mentioned in this entry, autumn is a great time to take advantage of local harvests. I haven’t done any baking with apples lately, though, so ours were accumulating. I’d meant to make a crisp last week, and this week, I was low on energy after working and picking up the share, but, well, I’d thrown a pot of vegetable stock on to boil, and I had some free time on my hands. And thus, the Harvest Crisp is born.

I was really dying to stir in about a half cup of pumpkin puree with the apples, but I didn’t want to open a whole can when I only have the huge ones.

This recipe is kind of like stone soup. You can substitute what you have and adjust what you don’t. I’m going to throw in some suggestions, but feel free to improvise. I’ve bolded the choices that I made.

Ingredients

5-8 medium apples, preferably of mixed variety, peeled, cored, and sliced
2-3 pears, peeled, cored, and sliced (optional)
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
A handful of walnuts or almonds (optional)
A handful of fresh cranberries, dried currants, or raisins (optional)
A handful of sunflower seeds

And, everyone will need:

1/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons natural sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup quick cooking oats
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
a bit of lemon juice (to keep the apples from browning)
1 stick unsalted butter or soy butter, cut into chunks

Directions

Toss the fruit in the lemon juice, and, if using, the pumpkin puree.

Arrange the fruit in the bottom of an oven-safe casserole dish or 9×13 baking pan.

In a stand mixer, or, with a pastry blender, cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients (oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, natural sugar, brown sugar, salt). Mix until large crumbs are formed and the mixture has an even texture.

Stir in any miscellaneous ingredients such as, in this case, the cranberries and walnuts. Spread the oat mixture over the fruit evenly so that the fruit is completely covered.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the crisp is brown and the fruit is bubbling. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Mini Chocolate Chip Ricotta Cakes

Yesterday, I finally got a chance to search through my Moosewood Cookbook that I’ve had for ages. I tried not to get too distracted on the desserts, since we were looking for easy entrees that we would both enjoy. We found lots, and we were inspired to make calzones last night. I also wrote down the names of a bunch of other recipes that we want to make so the next time we are contemplating what to make for dinner, we can go to that list, instead of searching the Internet.

Since we were making calzones, however, I couldn’t help but want to make the ricotta cake, since we were going to have a big tub of ricotta anyway. This recipe is based loosely on the Moosewood Cookbook recipe, however, I’ve made a handful of changes, like adding a graham cracker crust, for example.

Do yourself a favor. Use a springform pan if you’re making a cheesecake. If you’re not using the graham cracker crust that I recommend, use an aluminum pan that you can just eat out of, or, I suppose you could try cupcake liners. Putting them in a regular pan…. just will not be successful!

Ingredients

2 cups ricotta
2 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
5 tablespoons flour
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1.5 teaspoons lemon zest
1.5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 fresh mint leaves, put through a food processor or minced extremely finely (I used my SlapChop)
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips (more if you like)
12 mini graham cracker crusts (I bought them pre-made)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.

I used my stand mixer, but you can use a food processor or a bowl and a hand mixer.

Add ricotta, sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla, almond extract, vanilla, lemon zest, lemon juice, and minced mint to the bowl and stir completely. Scrape the sides of the bowl and stir again.

Fold in mini chocolate chips.

Scoop about 1/4 cup of the ricotta mixture into the premade graham cracker crusts. Place crusts on a baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes or until solid in the center.

Cool completely, then chill until cold.

Blue Ribbon Blueberry Crumb Pie

This pie was by far my favorite out of any at the pie-eating contest, and I’m definitely going to try to squeeze in another one before all the blueberries disappear from the supermarket shelves (or the prices rise dramatically as they are shipped in from lands far far away). People were clamoring to get a piece of this pie, be it because they were biased because the winner of the pie-eating contest had blueberry, or because of the rave reviews that traveled fast throughout the backyard.

Most blueberry pie recipes require you to cook the blueberries on the stove before you put it into the pie crust. Frankly, I thought this was crap, as I didn’t see why I needed to boil it down into gush, add more sugar than I ever do, and add more steps and more dishes to do when I was already making approximately two dozen pies. I searched and searched, and I finally found a recipe that didn’t pre-cook the blueberries. The magic ingredient was cornstarch, which would thicken the berries as they baked in the oven. I think our pie turned out way better than pre-cooked glop.

Though this pie hasn’t won any contests (yet!), we’re calling it blue ribbon since it was the blueberry pie that Joseph had when he won All Over Your Face 2009.

To make the exact pie that won the competition, just remove the crumb topping and instead of the lattice, make a double crust like in Mommy™’s Peach Pie.

Ingredients

1 pastry for double-crust pie (I used Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust

1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup white sugar (taste your berries to see how sweet they are – you may need a little more or less)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon lemon zest (I was down to the wire with guests coming when I made this, so I used about 2 teaspoons of lemon juice – next time I’ll probably do 1 tsp juice, 1 tsp zest)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
I might have put a dash of nutmeg in, too? I can’t remember.
3 cups fresh blueberries

Crumb Topping:
2/3 cup crushed cinnamon graham crackers
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter

Directions

In a medium sized bowl, stir the lemon juice and zest into the blueberries. Next, add the vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, and water. Sprinkle the cornstarch around the top, then mix it into the bowl.

Next, in a separate bowl, prepare the crumb topping. Mix graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar and flour. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or a fork until crumbly. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out half the dough and place it into the pie pan. Give the blueberries another good stir, then dump the mixture into the pie crust, mounding them in the middle if possible.

Wash your hands, since we usually do this next part with our hands. Carefully pour the crumb topping into the center of the pie crust, leaving about an inch of blueberry showing around the edge in between the crust and the topping. Pack the crumb fairly tightly, again, creating a mound in the center of the pie.

Next, roll out the rest of your pie crust, making strips to form a lattice top crust. If you need detailed directions on how to make the lattice crust, they’re also in Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust recipe.

Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes or until the crust is browning and the blueberry filling is bubbling. Depending on how much filling you have or how picky you are about having a clean oven, you may want to set your pie tin on some aluminum foil or on top of a baking sheet covered in parchment to catch any drips of sticky fruit.

Watermelon Keg and Punch Recipe

We saw the idea for this in Food Network magazine a few months ago and decided that we absolutely had to make it happen. We procured a plastic tap, added a bit of tubing to make it a little more secure, and made it happen! Warning: This is really, really messy. I got watermelon juice all over the kitchen trying to do this.

Tools

Spigot
Sharp Knife
Sturdy bowl or other means of supporting the watermelon
Pastry blender or potato masher
Strainer
Toothpicks

Ingredients

1 large watermelon
1 L bottle Mount Gay Rum (do yourself a favor and don’t use Bacardi – use something nicer)
1 package fresh mint leaves, stems removed
6 limes
lime juice to taste
lemon juice to taste
ice

This is what the drink mix looked like just before adding the rum, I believe…

Directions

The first thing you’re going to need to do is hollow out the fucking watermelon. It’s a task. Make sure you allow enough time for it. Take a sharp paring knife and slice the top of the watermelon off at an inward angle, like when you’re carving a pumpkin. Have a big bowl handy and a metal spoon and scrape the watermelon out until you’re down to the rind. See the video link for a demonstration. It’s less of a two person procedure than it looks like – I’ve just got two herniated discs and can’t lift anything.

So, once you’ve scraped out your watermelon, cover the top with plastic and put it in the fridge. Take a pastry blender, potato masher, or a big fork and mash up the watermelon as best you can. You’re basically juicing it. Take another bowl and put a strainer on top of it, preferably with fairly big holes, but not big enough for the seeds to fit through. Pass your squished up watermelon through the strainer, and you’ll get tons and tons of bright pink watermelon juice. If you’re not getting very much, continue to mash the pieces of watermelon.

Set aside the juice in a container that is not the watermelon. You can see that there’s a lot of juice. Since we were making lime pies, we had about 10 limes that we’d already juiced and zested but that still could contribute flavor to our cocktail. We threw them into the watermelon juice and let them sit there for the duration. What you can do is cut the limes in half, (pick out any obvious seeds), give them a good squeeze, and toss them in. They’ll bob around and flavor your drink.

Throw in the mint, then stir in some lemon and lime juice. Pour in the bottle of rum, then taste it, and if you want, add more lemon or lime. Refrigerate until serving.

When you’re ready, set the watermelon in its base. Use a sharp knife to poke a hole, close to the bottom of the watermelon, for the spigot. Insert the spigot snuggly. You’re now ready to fill the watermelon!

I wasn’t sure exactly how much the watermelon would hold, so I alternated a cup of ice, then a cup of punch until I was about halfway up, and then added some more punch. Since we didn’t want the fruit to just be rotting in the sun, we made sure to put a lot of ice inside. It kept the watermelon very cold. We left about half the punch inside the house to refill the watermelon with later.

I secured the lid of the watermelon to the top with two toothpicks, then we carefully carried it outside. Everyone loved it!

Fluffy Lemon Cookies (with Blueberries or Coconut)

Not the best photo, taken on my slightly working iPhone in our hotel room. We went away for the weekend (to Philadelphia, as I previously mentioned) and I personally took it upon myself to feed everyone I encountered along the way. Once the zucchini bread was in the oven, I started on making a huge batch of lemon cookies. Of course, you can reduce it if you’re feeding a smaller crowd.

Ingredients

1 cup butter
1/4 cups and 1 tablespoon shortening
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 egg
5 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons honey
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 cup plain yogurt
2-3 tablespoons zest
Juice of 2-3 lemons (3 stubborn lemons, 2 juicy lemons)

1/2 cup coconut (optional)
1/2 cup blueberries (optional)
sugar crystals (optional)

Directions

In a small mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Combine honey, yogurt, lemon zest and lemon juice. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with honey mixture.

Portion onto wax paper to press into rolls of cookie dough for slicing later. Place some of the dough onto the center of a sheet of wax paper. Pull half the sheet over so the ends meet. Use the edge of a baking tray to force the dough into the desired roll shape. Tuck the ends in to close.

Refrigerate (or freeze if you’re in a hurry) until firm (about 4 hours).

Remove from fridge and unroll wax paper. Cut into 1/4 inch thick slices. Press blueberries into dough, dunk in sugar crystals, or sprinkle coconut on top, if desired.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 12-14 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks.

London Ladies Lemon Bars

My friend Mary and I went to college together, then studied abroad together in London one semester. We graduated a year ago, and haven’t seen much of each other since, what with her being out on Staten Island and me being out in Rockland County. It’s a multi-step public transportation adventure.

She came to visit me today for an impromptu baking party. You see, a week or so ago, the car that my partner and I share broke down a mere one block from my job, and two of the guys that work in the building next door helped me push it to the side of the road. Naturally, I feel that a reward of some sweets is in order, and Mary helped me bake all day. We made a zucchini bread test run that’s a thank you for someone else, dozens of chocolate chippers, and, our proudest accomplishment, these lemon bars.

If you’ve ever read even one of my recipes, you’ll know that I don’t like super sweet things. If you’ve ever tasted a lemon bar, you’ll know that it’s easy for them to get sickening quite quickly. We aimed for a much more tart lemon filling, and we think they came out wonderfully.

The recipe that we started with is here, but we made drastic changes, including some that other reviewers suggested, and plenty that we came up with on our own.

(The following is directions for a doubled yield of two 9×13 pans. You can cut it in half if you want to for one pan only.)

Ingredients

Dough:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cups confectioners sugar
1 cups butter
1/2 cup shortening

Filling:
6 eggs
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour, maybe another tablespoon or two
1 1/2 cup lemon juice, with pulp
Zest of 5 or so lemons, (about 3-4 tablespoons of zest)
confectioners sugar for dusting

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two 9×13 baking pans with parchment paper or grease well (parchment is strongly preferred).

Cream 3 cups flour, 1 1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar, butter, and shortening. Pat dough into prepared pan.

Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until slightly golden. While the crust is baking, whisk together eggs, white sugar, remaining flour, and lemon juice until frothy. Pour this lemon mixture over the hot crust.

Return to the preheated oven for an additional 20 to 25 minutes, or until light golden brown. Cool on a wire rack. Dust the top with confectioners’ sugar. Cut into squares.

I packaged them nicely in reused materials… Plastic strawberry and tomato bins, decorated with an ad cut out of a magazine. I put strips of wax paper in between so that they didn’t get stuck together. Pretty cute!

Lemon Sponge Bundt with Coconut Frosting

Obviously, I’ve been wanting to get a lot of use out of my gorgeous bundt pan that Charlie got me for our anniversary. This weekend was Memorial Day, and we had a BBQ with a bunch of guests. The ten-cup capacity that’s usually far too much for us was gone in a matter of minutes.

I’ve never made a sponge cake before. It could have stood to be a bit spongier, but I expected this because of the recipe I used. As was explained the Joy of Baking website, most sponge cakes either get their texture and moisture from extra sugar or a soaking syrup. Since I don’t like extremely sweet things, the first option was out. Since we had limited ingredients and the frosting was a last minute addition, I didn’t plan for a soaking syrup, either. So, I used a recipe that had slightly different ingredients than what most of the sponge recipes I found called for.

The original recipe is here, though, as usual, I made a few changes. My recipe is below. For the top, my friend Bo whipped up this recipe, cut in half, also with a few changes explained below.

Lemon Sponge Cake

Ingredients (Cake)

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 1/4 cups evaporated cane sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 cup cold water
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
7 eggs, separated
Juice of two lemons
Grated zest of 2 lemons
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions (Cake)

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease two 9 inch round cake pans or one 10-inch tube pan and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add butter, egg yolks, 3/4 cup cold water, lemon juice and zest and beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth, about 2 minutes; set aside.

In a separate large bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Gently fold egg yolk mixture into egg whites until completely blended. DO NOT stir or beat the mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 40 to 60, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then loosen sides gently and invert cake onto a rack to cool.

Wait until cake has cooled completely to frost.

Ingredients (Frosting)

*Note: If making a layer cake, you’ll want to double this back to the original yield.

1/4 c. milk
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/4 c. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. flour
1/2 cup of coconut, plus more for garnish
One handful of your choice of berries, trimmed (optional)

Directions (Frosting)
In small saucepan cook the milk and flour until thick and smooth. Stir with wooden spoon constantly. Set aside to cool. In a bowl, cream butter and sugar together using electric mixer. Beat well until no longer grainy. Add cooked flour mixture. Beat until consistency of whipped cream. Add vanilla and stir. Add 1/2 cup coconut and stir, reserving some for garnish. Spread on cooled cake. Top with more coconut and berries, if desired.