Meyer lemons

I love meyer lemons and have taken a few opportunities to gather mass quantities of them in times of abundance from unsuspecting abandoned-tree owner’s yards and fields recently. ….. 😀

I have made tons of lemon curd — heres the recipe  in one of my daring bakers challenges — but i just came across this tasty kitchen recipe for meyer lemon sorbet (i ❤ you p.w.!!)

How lovely:

(from bunkycooks.com)

i want some now 🙂

Daring Bakers … my first challenge … and lemon curd!

first of all, my first experience with the DB,

FAILURE!

ok, now that i’ve got that out of my system – let’s talk macaroon, and Daring Bakers:

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S.

She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

THE PLAN:

Ingredients
Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery.
2. Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks.
3. Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
4. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter.
5. Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).
6. Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored.
7. Cool on a rack before filling.

THE TRUTH:

getting ready for the macarooning

things are looking good – eggs separated, nuts and flour awaiting addition…things are on the move toward macaroons.

whisking those egg whites

fun with slow shutter speed, no? good ‘ol Kitchenaid!

victory! that looks stiff to me!

whoo! still lookin’ on track!

hmmm....things start to go askew?

looks a little chunky, no? this is where i start to worry a little…

all piped out

i forged ahead though and here we have little dallops…fingers were crossed!

hmmm....underdone and overdone bottoms! now that's talent!

so after the initial bake and then the second bake – both as scheduled in the recipe – the ones on the right came out first. what happened? well, the ones on the right were, well chewy and underdone. the ones on the left spent a bit more time in the oven – and they look oddly like pancakes – no? they came out CRISP. drat. drat indeed.

neither the done or underdone were puffy or airy.

too heavy flour/nuts?

not beaten enough eggwhites?

crappy oven?

baker gene-less?

im still baffled.

….

then…

i had an epiphany – (not only on how to spell the word epiphany after a weird series of text messages this morning with an ex boyfriend) but also on what to do for the filling.

what does one do with five egg yolks one wonders?

yeah there were five, i broke one, oops, i know! 🙂

well, that my friends, i certainly know what to do with that:

MAKE LEMON CURD!

i don’t know about you, but i LOVE lemon curd. with deep abiding passion i love lemon curd.

like it was fate, five egg yolks is exactly the number needed for my tried and true lemon curd recipe permantly mounted to my fridge after a renegade lemon heist from a stranger’s ignored and “fruitful” lemon tree last spring.

ladies and gentlemen, i give you the gospel.

the gospel that is, in my own slightly skewed way of writing recipes.

Also, i dont know if you know, but i write for a newspaper for a living and spend a lot of time writing so when it comes to recipes – im lazy and just want to remember the highlights and highpoints of the task at hand (note the constant leaving out of letters, combining words and symbols and flurry of abbreviations throughout the written recipe)

i will decipher for you though the method as the ingredients are rather legible:

“2x boiler” =double boiler.

“yoks+sug – add juiezest” = combine yolks and sugar in top of double boiler, whisk over low heat, add juice and zest …

whisking away

… whisk until thick and coats the back of a wooden spoon (reaches nappe).”

ahh...nappe!

“buttr 1x” = once thickened, add small pieces of butter one at a time until incorporated taking bowl on and off heat as necessary.

so beautiful!

ok, one more beauty shot 🙂

ok – SO – i waited for the curd to cool a bit, but it never gets super jello-like with this recipe anyway, (a fact i appreciate!) and so i went to fill the done-er macaroons and, well, it wasnt quite as i’d hoped.

hmm...filled, but not quite puffy 🙂

it looks like a drooling clamshell, no? i know that wasnt the challenge point, but i cant help but giggle at it...?

so, after biting though my model, i just ended up with the following as my method of eating thereafter:

it was just as good 🙂

ahh well, maybe next month’ll be lemon curd, eh? hey, a girl can dream, cant she?  🙂

ok, one final lemon curd love photo, even better in the cute little red pot, no?? 🙂