Lemon Bars from Mom's Book

When I was at the store on Monday I bought a lemon because my original scone plan was to make cranberry lemon scones.  But then the strawberries beckoned and I was left with a lemon in my fridge.  Since I didn't really feel like cooking tonight (just had grilled ham and cheese for dinner) I decided to make some lemon bars!  I have never made these, lime bars are more my thing, but they turned out fantastic!  Nice and tart just like I like them!

These delicious things came from my great cookbook my mom gave me when I moved down to DC.  Thus the recipe is not online so I will write out everything here.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, plus a little extra for the top

3 tbs. unsalted butter, soft

1/2 cup, plus 3 tbs. flour

3 large eggs

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. lemon zest

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Then I beat the 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar and the softened butter on medium speed until creamy.  Very important that the butter is slightly soft or it won't really cream, just clump.  

Doesn't look like a lot until I added the flour and mixed on low speed until it got crumbly.

Then I poured that into my pan.  Now the recipe says to use a 8x8 square pan which I happen not to own.  So I used a round cake pan with a diameter of 8 inches.  I pressed the crumbly mixture into the pan so that there was a pretty even layer along the bottom.

  

That then got baked for 10-12 minutes.  I wasn't sure about timing because I put it in a different pan then specified so I kept an eye on it.  Turned out the timing was still accurate.  Once this comes out of the oven I turned down the heat to 325 (I actually almost forgot to do this!)

Maybe a little over baked, no biggie.

While that was baking I made the filling.  First the eggs are mixed on medium speed until foamy.

Then I zested the lemon and squeezed out all the juice.  I was a little short on the juice (needed 1/3 cup, only had 1/4) so I made up the difference with a little lime juice I had in my fridge.  I added this along with the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt to the eggs.

I mixed this all up until totally combined and then poured it onto the slightly cooled crust.

This was baked for 20-25 minutes or until set.  I only did 20 minutes and found the inner lemon part to be a little wet still.  Definitely cooked all of the way through, just a little goopy so it was hard to cut.  Not a big deal, just know to leave it in a little more next time!

I dusted it with powdered sugar (I used a little too much!) and let it cool on a wire rack.

I cut it into roughly 16 pieces.  The corners were a little small so of course I ate them immediately.

These turned out super delicious and I will definitely make them again!  My mom specified these as light when she wrote out the recipe in my book, maybe because they have very little butter compared to some other recipes I have seen (one even called for 2 whole sticks while this recipe doesn't even use 1/2 a stick!).  I totally cannot tell from tasting that they are light, just that they are awesome!

Sorry for my lack of cooking this week.  For some reason I was just in a baking mood.  Hopefully next week I will get back to some savory dishes I can eat for dinner and then have lots of leftovers!

Thanks for reading,

Liz

Strawberry Scones!

On Monday I had the day off so I went to the grocery store since my fridge was on the verge of empty.  There was a sale on strawberries (BOGO!) so of course I stocked up.  But then I realized, what the heck am I going to do with all these strawberries before they go bad?  Bake, duh.  So I looked up a recipe for strawberry scones which actually wasn't super easy since apparently all anybody wants is strawberry & cream scones.  But I found one and it was delicious!

Looking (and tasting) good!

I will post the link for the full recipe at the bottom of the post as always.  The ingredients are pretty straight forward, pretty much flour, butter, and strawberries.

First I cut up about a cup of strawberries (I used a little more than that).  Sprinkled that with some of the sugar and put it to the side.

Then I mixed all the dry ingredients together.  Pretty simple.

Next is the kind of hard part about making scones.  Cutting in the butter.  If you have a pastry cutter then you are set.  Otherwise, like me, you use two knifes.  Basically you cut the butter off the stick to add it in to the dry ingredients and then you just go to town on the mix cutting as much as you can to get the butter super small and entirely mixed with the dry stuff.  Not too hard, but kind of annoying and takes a little while to do well.

Then I added the half and half and mixed until a dough started to form.  I had to add a little more than was required in order to really make the dough stick together and not too dry.  Then it is strawberry time!

 Then I put the dough on my counter that had flour on and kneaded it a bit.  You want to knead lightly so not to overwork the dough or smash any of the delicious fruit.  I then formed the dough into a circle about 3/4 in.  think (I didn't really measure, that is just what the recipe said!).

Then I cut the dough into eight triangles and laid them out on a lightly-greased cookie sheet.  I made sure they were not too close to each other, but they also don't spread out too much when baking so it is not a huge deal if they are a little snug.

And then it is baking time!  15 minutes at first, then I took them out, sprinkled a little sugar on top (I went a little too haywire on the sugar) and then put them back in for about 8 minutes or until they are golden brown and bounce back a little when touched.

So basically these were awesome.  Just pure delicious strawberry and scone.  Really good and really not too hard.  They took me less than an hour and were so good I had to have two once they were cool enough to eat!

Here is the link if you are interested (which you should be): http://confessionsoftart.blogspot.com/2009/03/strawberry-scones.html

That's all for now, I think I am going to make something else tomorrow night, although honestly I may be baking again instead of cooking!

-Liz

Roasted tomato soup with broiled cheddar - Yum!

So tonight I decided to pull a recipe from Smitten Kitchen the blog.  I had bookmarked the recipe awhile ago thinking I might like to try it so tonight I did!  I also didn't feel like having a lot of leftovers since I will be in NY this weekend visiting Billy, so I halved the recipe.

Not quite as pretty as the original post's pictures, but tasted good!

Tonight I forgot to take a picture of all the ingredients, so I'll just start off with the first step: roasting the tomatoes.  I cut each Roma tomato in half lengthwise and laid them out on a baking pan.  Then I sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper and drizzled with olive oil.  In the picture below, the foil packet in the middle is two cloves of garlic that also get roasted.

These got put in the oven and roasted for about an hour until they get all juicy and brown and delicious.

After letting everything cool for a bit and unpeeling the garlic, I put everything in my brand new food processor I got for Christmas.  I chopped it up in there for a few minutes until the tomatoes and garlic were all soup-like.

Look how cute my food processor is!

Then that gets dumped into a pot with some thyme and broth (the recipe says either veggie or chicken, I used veggie).  I brought this to a nice boil and then turned the temperature down to a simmer for about 25 minutes. 

Simmer, simmer, simmer

While this was going I cut up a few slices of a nice French loaf of bread, toasted them, and put a little bit of butter on one side of each slice.

Once the soup was done I spooned it into a bowl and put it on a baking tray covered in a little foil (to protect against the melting cheese).

Finally I covered the bread and soup with some shredded cheddar cheese and put it in the oven to back for about 20 minutes.

So much cheese!

After pulling it out of the oven I definitely had to let it cool for awhile because the bowl was very hot after being in the oven.  And then it was time to eat!  It was very good, if a little messy to break through the bread and get to the soup.  I didn't put all of the soup back in the oven and saved it as leftovers.  I will be bringing some for lunch with a little toasted bread and cheese!

Here is the link to the blog with full recipe if you are interested!

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2011/09/roasted-tomato-soup-with-broiled-cheddar/

I'm done cooking for the week so see you next week, who knows what I'm cooking!

-Liz

I MADE BAGELS! - Blueberry Bagels

This is super exciting.  I made homemade bagels today.  I am super proud of myself.  It didn't go perfectly the whole time, but it wouldn't be cooking/baking if it had!

The finished product! 

I got this recipe from a blog called The Galley Gourmet after searching online a while ago for a blueberry bagel recipe.  I need to make a few tweaks next time I make this, but I will for sure be doing this again.  Not that hard, doesn't take too long (other than the hour of rising). why buy bagels?

So of course first I put together all of the dry ingredients.  The only thing mentioned in the recipe that I did not use was lemon zest.  Didn't have it, didn't want to go out and buy it, so I didn't put it in the recipe.  Maybe next time!  I also put in a little less yeast than it said to.  This is because I used a packet of yeast which turns out to be slightly less than the recipe calls for.  And by a little I literally mean like 0.05 oz less than needed.

Using my biggest bowl to leave room for kneading.

This recipe also assumes you have a stand up mixer with a dough hook.  I am not so lucky, thus I used my hands!  Which really isn't that bad.  So after the dry ingredients I added the water a little at a time, mixing with a spoon until the dough really started to come together.  After a little more water than the recipe stated the dough was formed enough to take it out of the bowl and onto a flour-covered counter with flour-covered hands.

Doesn't look like a lot of dough, thank goodness for rising!

Then I kneaded, kneaded, kneaded.  About 8 minutes (the recipe says 8-10).  And then it was time for the blueberries.  This was the hardest part of the recipe for me.  First off the recipe calls for freeze dried blueberries.  I did not have those.  Plus at the only store close to me, dried blueberries were $15 a container.  That was not happening.  So I used frozen berries.  This proved to be difficult.  Every time I worked some of the berries into the dough they either melted or popped and thus the liquid content of the dough went up.  So it got real messy real fast and I used a whole lot of flour to try and make up for it.  Super frustrating.  Next time I will plan ahead and go to a cheaper market to buy dried berries that's for sure.

The dough after blueberries, before rising.

Then I turned the oven on to 200, put the bowl covered with a towel on the stove top, and let it sit for an hour.  I took a run during this time (go me!).

Look how much bigger it is!

After the hour I punched the dough down gently to get the air out and then let it sit for 10 more minutes while the oven was preheating for baking and water was boiling on the stove.  Then I formed the dough into eight bagel shapes.  They didn't turn out super even, but no one is eating them but me so who cares!

On the baking sheet after forming!

They get to hang out for another 10 minutes and then it is time for boiling.  This is a super cool part.  The bagels get super big and fluffy after being boiled for a minute on each side.

Boiling away!

Look at the size difference! (top - preboil, bottom - postboil)

So after boiling each bagel on both sides, I drained them using a slotted spatula, and lined them back up on the baking sheet.  They were so big at this point that I had to split them onto two different sheets and just rotate them on different shelves in the oven throughout baking.

Ready to bake!

All done and looking delicious!

And that was that!  I took them off the pan and onto a wire rack to cool and they were done.  

Of course after letting them cool for a few minutes I had to do a taste test with a little whipped cream cheese and a glass of apple juice (all out of orange :( ).

Fantastic!

Taste test #2!

So all-in-all super successful.  A little snafu with the blueberries, but still all good!  I will definitely be making these every once in a while when I feel like some bagels!  Next time I may even dry a dried cranberry version, yum yum.

Here is the original blog post for the full directions and ingredients: http://www.thegalleygourmet.net/2012/04/blueberry-bagels.html

Thanks for reading!  Look for a post in the next few days, I'm planning to make some soup soon!

-Liz

The World's BEST Macaroni & Cheese

Well I did it!  I successfully made my mom's fantastic macaroni & cheese.  A total favorite while we were growing up (and now), Billy and I request this meal all of the time.  Since I was thinking about trying recipes I know and love from mom's book of amazingness, I decided to go for the big one and it worked!  This recipe is awesome and I am so glad it came out well.  Just like the stir fry, this recipe does not exist online so I will write it out for you here!

Ingredients:

3 tbs. butter or margarine (obviously there is more than that in this pic, I hadn't cut out how much I needed!)

5 tbs. flour

1.5 tbs. dry mustard or dijon mustard

0.5 tsp. salt, pepper to taste

16 oz. box medium (I used large) shells (wagon wheels are also great!)

16 slices good quality American cheese (I bought Boar's Head brand and it works out to about 3/4 lbs.)

2 cups milk

1/4 cup half and half

So to get started I got some water set to boil for the pasta and shred the cheese.  This was done on the 2nd biggest side of a 4-sided cheese grater.

Obviously not grated to perfection, but still good!

In a large saucepan I melted the butter over medium-low heat.  Then I combined the dry ingredients in a bowl to add to the melted butter.

I removed the butter pan from heat and stirred in the dry ingredients.  At this point I thought I was doing something wrong because it is super clumpy, but I soldiered on and it started working!  Very gradually, about 1/4 cup at a time, I added the milk and when that was finished, the half and half.  The entire time I stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred.  The stirring is super important.

Stirring away!

I then put the pot back on low heat and stirred even more until all of the lumps were gone and it started to thicken up a little.  Then I added the cheese in about 4 groups and stirred more and more until all the cheese melted.  And then I stirred more just in case.  At this point I tasted it and called my mom because I was so excited that it tasted just like hers!

Once the pasta was done I drained it and then dumped the shells into the pot with the sauce in it, and stirred and tossed until all the noodles were covered in delicious cheese sauce.

Yum!

My mom always serves this with applesauce, ham, and a green vegetable.  The ham is cooked in the oven or toaster oven with pineapple rings with some of their own juice and some brown sugar.  Sometimes we use deli ham, sometimes a ham steak.  This time I used deli ham.

For the green vegetable my favorite growing up was always broccoli so I steamed some up!

All in all this turned out to be a great meal and I am super proud of myself.  All of my taste testers really enjoyed it and the whole meal made me feel like I was home!

Soooooooo great!

Clean plate club right here!

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

-Liz