Lemon Glazed Butterhorns

Whew!! This weekend has been uncharacteristically hot for British Columbia, even if it is summer time. Yesterday, the temperature peaked at 34 degrees celcius in our neighborhood! Beautiful, but oh so hot! Especially when you're not used to it. And what's the rationale thing to do when its hot outside and you don't have A/C in your house? Well, you turn on your oven and bake something delicious... first thing in the morning, so your house is cookin' hot all day (no pun intended). That's what I did on Saturday morning when I made these babies for breakfast. It was worth it though, they were delicious! Up til now, these have been hubby's favorite store bought pastry, but I think I won him over - home made trumps store bought... especially when it's topped with my homemade lemon curd.

First, make your lemon curd and let it set up a bit. Here is a great recipe for lemon-lime curd. Replace the lime juice with lemon juice and you're set. Or you can enjoy them with lemon-lime curd too. Either way, they'll be delicious.

Lemon Glazed Butterhorns
Recipe minimally adapted from Mennonite Girls Can Cook

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp instant yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 cup icing sugar
• lemon curd

Method:

1. Combine the yeast, teaspoon of sugar and warm water in a small bowl. Stir gently and set aside to proof.
2. Measure the flour, second amount of sugar, and the salt in a large bowl. With a pastry blender (I just used my hands), cut the butter into the flour mixture until small crumbs form.
3. Warm the milk slightly and beat in the egg yolk. Pour the yeast and the milk mixture into the flour mixture. Stir to combine. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in the fridge for 2 hours - overnight.
4. Place the dough on a slightly floured surface. Pat down the dough and lightly sprinkle the top with flour. Roll the dough to form a 6x14 inch rectangle. Cut the dough lengthwise to make 8 - 14inch long strips.
5. Twist each strip so you have a long twisted rope of dough, then coil around itself into a pinwheel shape. Place on a greased cookie sheet. Cover and let rise for 1 hour at room temperature.
6. Preheat oven to 375F. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned (mine took closer to 20 minutes). Cool on a rack.
7. Make icing by mixing icing sugar with a small amount of water to make a thick icing (you should be able to drizzle it on the pastries but it shouldn't just run off of them. Set aside.
8. Top each pastry with a spoonful of lemon curd and spread to cover the tops of the pastry - leaving about a 1/2 inch border around the edges. Then drizzle each pastry with some of the icing made in step 7. Enjoy!

This post has been yeast spotted!!

Hope you enjoy these delicious breakfast pastries! I know we sure did - they were all gobbled up in a matter of minutes. Happy Baking my Friends!

Lemon Lime filled Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Icing

Excuse me while I try to stop drooling over these cupcakes long enough to finish this post! These cupcakes were super delicious. Probably the best cupcakes I've ever made! The inspiration came from a friend's blog, Lizardbreath Creations , a month or so ago. She made lemon-lime curd and homemade coconut bread and served the two together! How brilliant! So I made the coconut bread recipe and instead of baking it in a loaf pan as directed, I baked it in cupcake pans. I filled the cupcakes with the lemon-lime curd and topped with a simple buttercream flavoured with coconut. You honestly can't go wrong with this one!


Make the lemon-lime curd first. You will have to cook it and let it cool and set before using it to fill the cupcakes. You can find the recipe here - I followed the recipe exactly using the smaller quantity of sugar. You don't want the curd to be too sweet because the cupcakes + the icing are sweet enough already. You want something a little bit tart to balance out the sweetness.

Next up bake the cupcakes. Let them cool completely before attempting to pipe the curd into the middle of them though. It will be tough to wait that long; trust me, I speak from experience.

Coconut Bread (in cupcake form)

Recipe adapted from Lizardbreath Creations

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shredded coconut, sweetened


• 2 cups all-purpose flour


• 1/2 cup granulated sugar


• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar


• 1 tbsp baking powder


• 1/4 cup vegetable oil


• 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk


• 1 egg


• 1 tsp vanilla

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare muffin tins by lining with paper liners.


2. Sprinkle a little of the shredded coconut in the bottom of each cupcake liner.


3. Mix the coconut, flour, sugars, and baking powder in a large bowl.


4. In another bowl add the oil, coconut milk, egg and vanilla. Mix together well.


5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just incorporated. Pour into the prepared muffin tins. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (start with about 12-15 minutes).


6. Cool cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a wire rack until cooled completely.


7. Once cooled completely, with a sharp knife cut a small tunnel into each cupcake and then pipe full with lemon curd. Pipe coconut icing liberally onto each cupcake in order to cover the hole where the curd was piped in.

For the icing I just dumped ingredients into my mixer bowl without measuring (bad me) and tasted until it was yummy. If you are one of those measuring types, feel free to use this vanilla icing and instead of the vanilla extract, add coconut extract.

Happy Baking my Friends! Hope you're ready for another busy week.

The Daring Bakers October 2010 Challenge - Doughnuts!

Well, its that time again - time to post up the October 2010 Daring Bakers Challenge! And a challenge it was. The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious. It was my first time deep frying anything and I was so happy to have my good friend D there to help. It was nice to have two sets of hands as there was a lot of multi-tasking involved!

I chose to make two kinds of doughnuts - pumpkin cake doughnuts and a yeasted doughnut recipe called bombolini. The bombolini were filled with either lemon curd or raspberry jelly (both courtesy of D). Both types of doughnut were absolutely delicious and were devoured eagerly by hubby's friends who were at our place for games night while all this craziness was going on!

I'm not going to repeat the recipes here as I did not do anything significantly different from the original recipe and it would make for an awfully long post! So, you can find the pumpkin doughnut recipe here and the bombolini recipe here. This post will mainly be about photos! We got some great photos and these recipes literally made loads of doughnuts. I would highly recommend both recipes and the cinnamon sugar that the pumpkin doughnuts are rolled in is absolutely magical!

I've always been afraid of deep frying - mainly out of the fear of being burnt by the hot oil splashing up at me. But I feel like I really conquerred that fear during this challenge! The one thing I found very challenging was the temperature fluctuations... not sure if it is because I have a gas range or what, but I was adjusting the temperature of the burner every few minutes to maintain the recommended deep frying temperature. Any tips from you experienced deep fryers out there or do most of you have the same problem? Either way, we didn't have any doughnut disasters - they all turned out beautifully and D & I made a great team. I deep fried the doughnuts while she tossed the hot doughnuts in the cinnamon sugar mixture. We definitely had an assembly line going!

I hope you enjoy the photos of our adventure! D is joining the DBs for the November challenge and is really excited. Thanks for stopping by my blog to check it out and thank you to Lori for such a fantastic challenge! I'm already looking forward to next month's challenge!

Happy Baking my Friends!

Lemon Meringue Dessert

Ok, I've been procrastinating about writing this blog post ALL day. Now the day is nearly finished and I haven't blogged yet. :( So since I have nothing to do while my latest batch of bread dough rises, I will blog! I don't have any wine to tell you about today, so I'll tell you about an easy dessert to make this weekend. My inspiration comes from Jamie Oliver's TV show - Jamie at Home. He made his with lovely pears, chocolate, orange and hazelnut... but I didn't have that stuff on hand, so I made mine a little differently (and far more simple). There are three parts to this recipe - the meringue, lemon curd, and whipped cream.

First up - the meringue! I took this recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. It's easy, but be sure you have the time to to allow them to bake and dry out sufficiently.

Meringue

Recipe from Joy of Cooking p. 741

Ingredients:

• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup sugar

Method:

1. Beat egg whites, vanilla and cream of tartar in a large bowl until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar one tablespoon at a time and beat on high until meringue holds very stiff peaks.
2. Preheat oven to 225F.
3. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Turn out meringue onto the lined tray and smooth it out into a rough rectangle shape. Leave it a little uneven so it looks rustic.
4. Bake in preheated oven for about 1 1/2 hours. Turn oven off and open door a crack and leave meringue sit in oven while it cools - for about one hour until its sufficiently dry.

Now that the meringue has been baked, make the lemon curd topping. Or, if you are really efficient, make the lemon curd while your meringue bakes!!

Lemon Curd

Ingredients:

• 3 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar
• juice from 2-3 lemons
• 3-4 tbsp butter

Method:

1. In a medium saucepan, bring 1 inch of water to a simmer. In a heat-proof medium bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar for about 2 minutes or until smooth. Whisk in the lemon juice until combined.
2. Place the mixing bowl on top of the pot of simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. Stir the mixture constantly, scraping with a spatula, until it begins to thicken. Remove from heat when it coats the back of the spoon.
3. Whisk in the butter, one tablespoon at a time, adding the next tablespoon when the piece before just about disappears into the mixture. Place in clean glass container with plastic wrap laid on top. This will prevent skin from forming. Store in refridgerator until ready to use.

Whip about 1 cup of whipping cream with vanilla and sugar to taste.

Now you're ready to assemble your dessert! Place the meringue (careful - its delicate and will break easily) on a wooden cutting board (remember we're going for the rustic look here!). Spoon the lemon curd over top and smooth out in a layer on top of the meringue. Sprinkle with graham crumbs (however may or few you like!). Then spoon the whipped cream over top. Garnish with more graham crumbs and grated lemon zest. Enjoy!

Remember not to assemble this dessert until right before you're ready to serve (you don't want the meringue to get soggy as the moisture is allowed back into it!) I hope you enjoy this dessert as much as we did. It is a rustic, casual dessert that is just fantastic following a family dinner. :) Happy Baking my Friends!