The First Lemon Bar Post?

Can it be?

I feel like lemon bars are what I crave making/end up making most often, when I don't have a recipe I specifically shop for. It's usually honey lavender, but these here are going to be nice plain ones. With a guest photo by pro photographer Angela Char.

I used less sugar; still too sweet. This is becoming a recurring problem for me!


When you cut into bars while hot.


When you cut into bars once cool.

And for the grand finale:

Angela's magic.

Recipe: Not sure. It was plain! We googled lemon bars! Maybe you remember, Amanda?

I think powdered sugar all over lemon bars is just frivolous. They are brilliant nude.
-Anna

The End of Canned Beans

I used canned. Don't. Skip the walnuts. Obviously.



Oh and I forgot the Parmesan. Silly.
-Amanda

Too Much Good Stuff

These muffins right here, what do you suppose they're made of? Flour, butter, sugar, maybe? With a few poppyseeds mixed in?

Nnnope!

Spoiler alert: recipe

If you want the story to unravel before your eyes, read on.

So once upon a time, there was a girl. She used to eat lots of poppyseed cakes as a child, because her daddy bought them at the Stolichnaya on Fairfax and Santa Monica. So she went to Berkeley Bowl and saw heaps of her favorite little seed, scooped them up into a hefty plastic bag, and tucked them away into her shopping cart. They sat in her cabinet, nestled between a bag of walnut pieces her grandma sent her, and a half-eaten emergency bag of chocolate chips.

Then one day everything changed. She came home after a month away (at her real home) and this bag of poppyseed went squish squish when she went digging through her cabinets. MUFFINSSSS.

Actually that was a lie. This girl just wanted lemon bars. But she ran out of powdered sugar. Fortunately, she later realized that she could make powdered sugar with her new mortar and pestle when (not really) making lemon glaze.

The poppyseed lemon muffins were a suggested link on the website with the lemon bar recipe. But it was not a satisfying recipe, so the girl scoured the web for something butterfree (shoutout to pokemon. not really. shoutout to buttersafe.com. so much funny!). THEN SHE FOUND a recipe. That she could use.

This story has lots of wholes in it and is not very professional.

Same with these muffins:

I used somewhere between 3/4c and 1c honey, 1/3c olive oil, 1-1/4c nonfat milk, 3 eggs, 2-1/4c whole wheat flour, 3-1/2 tsp baking powder, a tsp of sea salt, zest from one lemon, and a heaping 1/4c of poppy seeds.

I mixed the flour, baking powder, and salt, and then poured in a whisked mixture of honey, olive oil, milk, zest, and egg. It took a while to integrate the honey well, but it was worth it. It's all just preparation for the day you'll need to whip cream by hand.

I then mixed in poppy seeds, and poured the batter into (lined) cupcake and muffin tins. I baked at a preheated 400F oven, for approximately 20 minutes. Probably a little less. Toothpicks come out clean, it's nice. Voila

(see I know French too)

The most important point here is that poppy seeds are a Miracle! No they are not from papaver somniferum, which oozes when you slit it during growth, and morphines your soul. But Morpheus didn't forget about us normal-poppy eaters. He made sure that if you combine honey and poppy seed, you grow strong and mentally sound. If you're sleepy, you just eat some ground up poppy seed and away you go. Honestly, any problems you have, poppy seeds will fix them.

-Anna

Cheesecake for the Boys

Oh those Italians!

Letting me make a plump and juicy cheesecake, crustless, ricotta-full.

They do know the way to so many hearts.

So this was my first cheesecake! It didn't fall, which I was not happy about, but apparently this isn't a huge issue for most people who consume your cheesecake, so no need to fret.

I don't think I've ever zested so much in my life. But I loved every minute of it. 3 whole lemons. 2 big ole oranges.



Here's the recipe.

I used less sugar, and it was definitely still very sweet on the tooth.

So rich yet fresh. Mmm. Oh!! And I used low fat ricotta. Still rich enough to only be able to take a forkful, wait a while, take another, share some with your host's roommates, bring some home, have him bring some home, have him drop it on the way home, have him cut off the part that touched the floor and eat the rest, too many commas, not enough grammar.

Cheesecake! Blueberries next time. And chocolate chips. Mmmmm!

-Anna

Wonderbread

I woke up and my mom wanted something with banana. I remembered my roommate making some banana bread that I had thought was funky upon first bite. It tasted yogurty. 10 seconds later, I had wanted to find the recipe. So I looked up banana yogurt breads--they existed! Of course, now that I'm back in Berkeley, I asked my roommate about that banana bread, and she claims that it had zero yogurt. None.

Point is, it turned out we only had one banana left, but I still wanted yogurty bread. Since I got a good grip on zesting, I went for an all-out lemon yogurt loaf. I pumped it full of blueberries, soaked in a tangy glaze, and had myself the tastiest, moistest yogurty loaf of my life.



I found this zesty lemon bread recipe and modified.

Differences:
I used a LOT less sugar. And it was still too sweet.
I used low fat yogurt.
I used more lemon juice, and less powdered sugar, for the glaze. The cake soaked it up nicely, but you had to be very careful slicing/lifting. Maybe you didn't have to be, but I was. This loaf was precious to me.
I used blueberries, of course. There are few bloods more tantalizing than that of the blueberry.

Spongy and glorious.



Please make this and feed it to anyone who needs a smile. I'd recommend making a couple loaves at once--I was sad that I only got a slice and a half.
-Anna

The Pits are for People You Don't Like

Cherry Lemon Pine Nut Muffins



These are prettier than they taste. The pine nuts and the cherries are the best part. I would go for orange next time. Maybe it's because I didn't use meyer lemons. Oh well.

I used this recipe, but I popped cherries in them. That's not meant to sound sexual; I don't really know how to rephrase it...

Also I didn't grind up the pine nuts since I don't have a food processor and I was too lazy to dig out the blender.



And right, warn people you do like that there are pits in these. Otherwise you can laugh at the people you don't warn about the pits while listening to this.

-Amanda

Pixies in Your Breakfast Dish

Finally! An original recipe!

So I was feeling down, and decided to walk through the glistening heap of (unaffordable, just now) surprises that is Sur La Table. And I made my first purchase--a pixie muffin pan (and a cookie cutter). I also talked to someone who went through culinary school who used that cookie cutter to shape his rice.

Anyways, I had no idea what pixie muffins were, but they had little flower patterning, and muffins are always too large for me, so I gave them a try.



Lemon Berry Pixie Muffins
yield:24

2 heaping (and I mean huuge) tbsps of flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 (slightly smaller) tbsps of sugar
1 heaping (bigbigbig) tbsp of yogurt
half an egg's worth of egg white liquid
1 tsp fine lemon zest
blueberries and raspberries (i used less blueberries than there were muffins, and ripped the raspberries up into pieces)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine flour and baking powder, then add combined yogurt and sugar, and finally add combined egg and lemon zest. Then throw in as many berries as needed--I liked my muffins rich and juicy, oozing out deep blues and purples.

Fill well-buttered (I used my finger to get into the crevices) pixie muffin pan either 2/3 of the way or completely with batter, depending on the size of muffin you want. Bake until just before it would start to brown (the muffin will feel nice and springy to the touch). There you have it!

These did not last long at all, so don't plan on serving them to anyone. Just show someone how pretty they are, and then devour them.



I also attempted to make banana nut yogurt pixie muffins, but I was not a fan, so you don't have to suffer through the recipe and consequent disappointment in muffin taste.

But here's a photo for y'all. I still like their figure.


-Anna

Sweetening the Studies

Inspiration is like hunger. Have a nibble, suddenly you're ravenous. The trick is, it's harder to motivate myself to take a bite of a book than a cookie. Studying also doesn't have quite the same level of stress-relieving ability as baking does. So during finals I found a sugar cookie recipe to love and adore, and my cookies were a lot less unappetizing than my prior salty, rock-hard, or completely melted attempts.



For the above cookie, I followed the recipe for lavender lemon cookies, and made a little lavender flower trail for appeal.

http://52kitchenadventures.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/week-19-lavender/

For the cookie down below, I used chai tea spices on the same sugar cookie recipe to make cookies that were basically snickerdoodles.