Lime and Lemon Shortbreads

The end of another short (and unofficial) internship meant another batch of cookies to deliver. I especially wanted to thank the doctor I was shadowing at the time, so I stamped a handful of these cookies with a "Thank You" message with a heart~

I was half tempted to make cranberry shortbreads again, but decided to opt for something different. Part of my motivation for this was that I did not want to deal with creaming butter and sugar. Therefore, I flipped through my "La Grande Imprimerie Gourmande" recipe book, which is full of various shortbread recipes, from the sweet to the savory.

I came across this citrus shortbread recipe that didn't seem like it would be too much trouble. In fact, the only problem was that there was no lemon or lime at home! A quick trip to the grocery store at the end of the road, and that was remedied with 4 untreated lemons and some limes.

I made a single batch of these, intending to make more. However, a shortage of time caught me, and I only managed the one. However, it was sufficient for the doctor and the nurses of the department. Unfortunately, one did not like lemon, so she did not eat any, but I could not have predicted that.

I made a small package with the portion for the doctor, and then put the rest in a small box to leave on the table of the nurses' room. Ingredients lists were stuck on, and a small blue flower.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 small lemon
• 1 lime
• 200 g unsalted butter, softened
• 300 g flour
• 100 g powdered sugar
• 1 pinch of salt

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 150˚C.
2. Zest the lemon and the lime. Juice them in separate bowls.
3. In a mixing bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, and zests.
4. Add 1 tsp lime juice, and 1 tbs lemon juice, then the butter.
5. Mix by hand until the dough comes together, without overmixing.
6. Form a ball, and cover it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 1 hour.
7. Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to about 1 cm thickness.
8. Cut out desired shapes, and bake for 20 minutes.
9. Let cool and enjoy.

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.

Lime and Strawberry Mini Cheesecake

For reasons, I had to provide some baking samples a few days ago. I wasn't too sure of what to bake, and I wasn't in the mood for baking a cake like banana bread. I did not really have the ingredients for much else, so I opted for cheesecake (and even then I had to borrow butter from a neighbor).

Inspired by the reunion cheesecake, I opted for a lime flavored base on top of a shortcrust pastry. I got distracted and thought we still had a jar of forest fruit jam, but I was mistaken. Therefore, I cooked, reduced, and crushed some frozen strawberries we still had, and topped the cheesecake with that. I made 4 of the same ones, in 10.5 cm springform pans.

I then dug through the various sizes of boxes and cardboard in our recycling box, to find some way to package 3 of these so they wouldn't get crushed or fall while I biked to deliver these for the people who were going to sample them.

Reunion Cheesecake

August 8, 2015

A week after my return from China and Hong Kong, I had a reunion with other alumni from my High School. Because we are spread all over the place, we had a mini European reunion for those of us based in Europe (and who could make it on that date).

We had a great barbecue, with skewers, corn, potatoes, salad, and more. Someone the week before had told me they missed the cheesecake our dorm mother used to make. Since I was hosting the event this time, and also since my recipe came from our dorm mom's recipe, I thought I would make cheesecake for our reunion dessert.

I made a shortcrust pastry for the crust, and the filling is lime flavored. Due to not having enough Greek yogurt, I thought I would try baking it a little less time, to keep the cake from being too dried. Apparently, it was a good choice, since my cousin who has eaten many of my cheesecakes said this was one of the best.

I topped it with a berry sauce made from blended frozen berries that I had let thaw, then reduced with some sugar to cut through the acidity. When I brought it out to the table (under the sunny sky), some others decided we should write DVA (the initials of our alumni association) on it. It wasn't very visible just carved out with a skewer, so I used some leftover almond powder I had to go over the letters.

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.