Lime Pistachio Shortbread Cookies

December 18, 2015

A friend had requested that I bake something for her (anything was fine). I also needed more cookies to give away as there was not enough mint chocolate cookies. This time I was extremely fed up with studying for exams, so I figured I could go and deal with a lime.

This recipe is adapted from Cooking Channel, although I did not use cardamom. I chopped the pistachio into stick-like slivers instead of crushing them or putting them through a blender.

I glazed them with the same lime glaze I have used before. As a last minute decoration, I slivered some lime zests and dropped them on top. The squares I had originally scored in the dough were a little big, so instead of re-drawing the lines, I split each in half to get triangles. I think these were the most fragile shortbreads I have made.

These were also packaged into little bags to give away, and served as snacks to go with tea for an end-of-semester get-together with friends.

Lime Glazed Cranberry Shortbread Cookies

Remember these cranberry shortbread cookies I made last summer? Well I made them again, this time for a friend's birthday gift. I wasn't really up for rolling out the dough, however, so the dough was rolled into a log, then refrigerated. I then sliced the log into fairly irregular (I don't have much experience in cooking log cutting) slices, then baked them. Since I only made half a batch, my log was short enough that I could wrap it in cling film, and tie one end to the rack in the fridge, so that the surfaces didn't leave any flat side to my log.

Just like for the oatmeal cookies, I soaked the dried up cranberries in a bit of hot water before chopping them and throwing them into the mix. Instead of leaving them plain, I made a quick glaze with some icing sugar and lime juice, which I spread on half of the top surface of each cookie. The recipe for this glaze was from Cakecrumbs. The cookie recipe can be found in the link above.

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LIME GLAZE

  Ingredients

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tbs lime juice

  Procedure

1. Mix together sugar and lime into a paste in a heat-proof bowl.
2. Set the bowl into a pot of simmering water and heat until mix is runny.
3. Glaze cookies, and let dry.

Banana Bread Prize

Last week, my university's Cooking Society had a "golden egg" hunt event, where students could win prizes for finding one of three eggs on campus. The chair of the society, and a friend of mine, asked me if I would like to contribute to the prices, either by providing a cake, or giving a baking workshop. As I cannot teach to save my life (last time I tried, it was horrible), I opted for providing a cake.

My original plan was to make a carrot cake. Grating carrots, however, was not going to be feasible with the amount of time I had to bake this cake. Then I thought I would make a 2-layered banana bread, with cream cheese frosting in between, and maybe some caramel sauce drizzled on top. Me procrastinating on schoolwork did not allow for such fancifying of the cake, so I ended up with more or less plain banana bread.

For a better visual, I put some banana slices on top of the cake before baking. The underside was dipped in flour to keep them from sinking, then the whole top was glazed in watered-down orange and ginger jam that my cousin had bought and left in the kitchen.

I wrapped the loaf cake (1.5 times the recipe, so that it would be a little taller) in aluminum foil for transport, and added a piece of paper with the list of ingredients and possible allergens. I guess I kind of adopted the blue sakura (cherry blossom) paper punch-out as my symbol for gifts... I've been using it more and more.

Recipe for banana bread here!

Lemon Pound Cake

For yet another hallway dinner - this time with a theme of German-speaking countries - I settled on a lemon pound cake (Zitroenenkuchen, from Germany or Switzerland). Most of the recipes I found, however, used about 4-5 eggs, which do not go along with my baking ideals.

Therefore, I adapted an egg-free pound cake recipe I found on Veg Recipes of India, and soaked that in a lemon glaze/syrup. This recipe is amazingly easy and has such a soft, moist cake that is very pleasing to eat. After the cake was thoroughly soaked in the lemon syrup, I iced the top with a lime icing, just because I had half a lime laying around from making another dish.

The yellow color of this came comes mostly from butter. It has quite a hefty amount of butter (1/2 cup of melted butter, 200 g unmelted) which deterred me at first. Not finding many other options, however I gave it a try. If it wasn't so yellow, I may have had added a drop of food coloring, but it was unnecessary.

In addition to the lemon juice used in the syrup soaking into the cake, and a tiny bit of lemon juice in the batter, the zest of 2 lemons was mixed into the batter, adding to the overall fragrance of the cake.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 200 g butter
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2/3 cup (200 g) condensed milk
• 1/2 cup milk (I used soymilk)
• 2 lemons, zested and juiced
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/4 lime
• 50 g icing sugar + some more 

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside.
3. In a saucepan, melt the butter. Once melted, add in the condensed milk and whisk until homogeneous.
4. Warm the milk in a pan or in the microwave (about 30 seconds in the microwave were sufficient). Add to the butter and condensed milk mix.
5. Whisk in the sugar, lemon zest and 1 tbs of the lemon juice.
6. Add the sifted flour mix, and mix until homogeneous.
7. Bake for 30-50 mins (depending on the oven) or until a toothpick inserted in comes out dry.
8. While baking, mix the remaining lemon juice with about 50 of icing sugar. It should be more like a syrupy glaze rather than liquid. Add icing sugar as seen fit.
9. Using a skewer or toothpick, poke deep holes throughout the baked cake. The more holes the better, but do not break the cake.
10. Spoon or pour the lemon syrup glaze over the top of the cake so that it soaks into the holes.
11. Leave the cake in the pan for at least another 10 mins.
12. Mix some icing sugar with lime juice. The icing should be white-ish, and relatively thick while still being somewhat runny.
13. Ice cake as seen fit.