Eggless Lemon Bars

A few weeks ago, my cousin L and I had a friend over for dinner. I also had a single overripe banana sitting around waiting to be either used or dumped. Since I am no fan of dumping food, I looked for a way to use it up.

Banana bread requires at least 3 bananas, and so did my banana brownies. I then recalled a recipe I had stumbled upon for an eggless version of lemon bars, from Heart of a Baker. Not that I had ever tasted any classic lemon bars, I opted to give it a try.

First, I lined a small pan with my usual pâte brisée (shortcrust pastry), which I baked for about 10 minutes. Then I filled it with the lemon filling, and baked it some more. The result was a zingy, fresh bar that smelled like banana but tasted 100% lemon.

---

---

LEMON BAR RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1/4 recipe pâte brisée (shortcrust pastry)
• 1 ripe banana
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 1/2 cup sugar
• vanilla
• 1 tbs cornstarch
• 1 tbs flour
• icing sugar, for dusting

  Procedure

1. Prepare the crust in an 8 in. x 8 in. pan as per the shortcrust pastry recipe. Precook 10 mins.
2. In a bowl, mash the banana.
3. Add in the rest of the ingredients.
4. Pour into the crust.
5. Bake for 30 mins at 180˚C or until set.
6. Cool then refrigerate min. 1 hour.
7. Cut into squares or bars.
8. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Lemon and Nectarine Cheesecakes

 July 20, 2015

This was an unplanned cheesecake, to be honest. I went to the supermarket with my uncle, with the idea of getting ingredients for tiramisu. The cheese/dairy section of the first place we went to had been cleaned out, however, and the 2nd one did not have any ricotta or mascarpone. I had to settle for something else.

When I found a few boxes of cream cheese, I figured I could make cheesecake. My uncle had mentioned liking denser, rich cheesecakes, which is close to the ones I have been making (although I've been trying to make them less dense, these cheesecakes will never be the fluffy or spongy types that use eggs). I then ran to the yogurt aisle in hopes of finding Greek yogurt to use instead of sour cream. No luck. I went for plain yogurt, and figured I'd deal with it as it comes.

The first thing I did when getting home was to put the yogurt to drain in a strainer, in the fridge, for the whole night. I was teaching someone how to make the cheesecake, and he was surprised at the amount of water the yogurt released. This, by the way, is how to make a Greek yogurt-like substance to use. Then I made the cheesecake as usual, flavoring it this time with lemon zest and lemon juice. I did not have any egg replacer, so I tried making my own out of a mix of starches and baking powder (recipe here). I ended up with way more batter than I'd bargained for.

Therefore, I made 2 cheesecakes, with the same filling and topping, but with different crusts. The first, in a smaller mold, had a homemade shortcrust pastry crust that went up the sides, whereas the second just had a crushed cookies and butter crust at the bottom.

I topped it with watered-down nectarine jam, to which I had added more lemon juice. While I was dealing with the jam, I took some green nectarines, and let them macerate with a sprinkling of sugar, to soften them a little. Then I arranged them on the top. The slice of lemon in the middle was a reminder to the filling's flavor.

Small Apple Tarts

 

Whew, I got a lot of backlog to catch up on on this blog! For the past two months, I was on a trip to China. The internet there is fairly restricted, and all Google-related sites -- Blogger included -- were out of my reach. Therefore, everything I baked had to stay on my camera or laptop for later blogging.

June 6th, 2015

A couple of days after my arrival in China, my aunt who lives there told me to eat the four apples that were in the fruit basket. Not really wanting to eat them plain, and itching to attempt my very first baking in such a hot climate, I settled with small apple tarts.

I could not easily find the material I needed, so I settled with making a shortcrust dough and cutting it into circles with the edge of a rice bowl. Then I was going to just lay the apple slices on top in a spirally pattern, until I realized that the last apple was more than half bad already. I had to improvise.

Therefore I laid the whole slices with the wider curve facing out, then shredded the remaining apple into small strands, which I dumped somewhat randomly in the middle.

General apple tart tutorial can be found at this link!

Milk Tart (Melktert)

Long ago, I saw a recipe from Cakecrumbs for a milk tart, a cinnamon-flavored South African custard tart. Initially, it was the appearance of it that drew me -- that, and the word "cinnamon." The custard itself, however, required quite a few eggs that I know, from experience, would not work with just egg replacer. Google helped me to find a vegan alternative.

First, I settled with making a shortbread crust, which I put into my mini tart pans, and baked until golden. This time, instead of standing around rubbing the butter into the flour, I attempted to pulse it a few times in a blender with a chopper blade attachment, and finished the rest by cutting with two knives. It made for more dishes to wash, but resulted in a much shorter pastry, and less mess on my own fingers.

Then came the time to make the filling. I looked in my various ingredients and baking equipment boxes, convinced that I had a bag of cinnamon sticks laying around. The one time I wanted to use one, and it turns out I left them at home. Silly me. Cinnamon powder would have to do.

Simmering soy milk with the cinnamon, I added a slurry made with some more soy milk and cornstarch. Once cooled a little, I filled in my tarts, then left them set in the fridge. It actually took two days to stop jiggling. Then the whole surface was dusted in a mix of icing sugar and cinnamon.

Since I had some excess custard, I filled little dessert jars for extra nomming.

---

MILK TART RECIPE (for approximately 6 mini tarts)

  Ingredients

     Shorbread Crust

• 250 g (2 cups) flour
• 150 g (10.5 tbs) butter, diced
• 25 g (2 tbs) unrefined sugar
• 2 tbs cold water
• a pinch of salt

     Custard Filling

• 2.5 cups soymilk
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder or cinnamon stick
• 3 tbs cornstarch
• sugar, to taste

     Dusting

• 1 tbs icing sugar
• 1 tbs cinnamon powder

  Procedure

     Shortbread Crust

1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl.
2. In a blender with chopper blade, pulse flour mix with butter until a breadcrumb consistency is obtained.
3. Add water progressively until the dough comes together into a ball.
4. Refrigerate 30 mins before rolling out.
5. Preheat oven 180°C.
6. Roll out to desired thickness, and line pans with the dough.
7. Using a fork, poke holes all over the surface of the dough.
8. Bake for 15-30 minutes, or until golden.

     Custard Filling

1. In a pot, mix 2 cups of soymilk with cinnamon, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer to infuse cinnamon.
2. Make a slurry out of the cornstarch and the remaining soymilk.
3. Progressively add slurry to the hot soymilk, whisking constantly.
4. Add sugar to taste, and continue cooking until thickened.

     Assembly

1. Pour custard filling into the tart shells.
2. Let cool then refrigerate overnight.
3. Dust with a mix of cinnamon and icing sugar.

  Tips and Comments

• You can use any other milk. I just used soymilk because that is what I had at hand.
• I ran out of cornstarch halfway through, so I subbed the rest with 3 times the volume in wheat flour. This requires longer cooking for it to thicken, however.
• This recipe is for approximately 6 mini tarts, although I am not sure about how much filling it would make. I made 3 mini tarts with 1/2 of the crust recipe, and used about 2 cups of soymilk overall to fill my 3 tarts and two little glass pots.
• If you have leftovers, put them in various recipients (jars, glass pots, etc.), and refrigerate to make little custards.

Egg-free Frangipane and Pear Tart

Pears getting old in the fruit basket? Time to test a new recipe! I made the crust the same way as I always do (see recipe). Then I topped it with frangipane, an almond-based paste.

Since frangipane is usually made with eggs, I had to look for a good substitute, which I found on Z'oeufs peux pas, a French blog written by a mother with some kids who have egg allergies. The recipe itself can be found at this link, and is translated below.

As the pears were kind of hard, I poached them in sugar syrup with a hint of cinnamon. I topped the pre-baked crusts with the frangipane paste, then laid the sliced pears on top. The whole was baked for about 25 minutes, then glazed in reduced poaching liquid.

---

FRANGIPANE RECIPE (for about 7 mini tarts)

  Ingredients

• 50 g butter, softened
• 100 g ground almonds
• 40 g golden sugar
• 63 g golden sugar
• 1/4 tsp baking powder

  Procedure

1. Mix sugar and butter. Add in ground almond.
2. Mix in the plain yogurt and baking powder.
3. Mix until smooth. This is easiest using a fork.

Apple Tart

On the day before I had to return to the university, there was a brunch for one of my cousins. Many people showed up, and each brought something. There were a lot of desserts (passion fruit mousse, chocolate mousse, cakes, etc), and I contributed with an apple tart.

That makes it apple tart number....... 14!!

I won't bore you with the usual details on how I made this... If you're curious, there are plenty of other posts about apple tarts ;)

I had some leftover dough, so I made 2 more mini ones. By then it late, and I was tired, so I didn't bother shaping them into a flower.

Mini Jam Tarts

 

December 6th

That weekend was a baking spree weekend, despite me having a looot of deadlines to look out for. I had a lump of dough that dated from some months before, that I had previously frozen for future use. Well it was now or never. I also happened to have a jar of forest fruit jam that I needed using up.

I made some mini jam tarts! Since I had 6 mini tart tins, I used those. Just dough and jam straight from the jar.

In an attempt to use up more dough in one go, I made latices on top. Unfortunately, some of the jam bubbled up and ruined the look.

Birthday Apple Tart

For my mom's birthday this year, I scribbled a few ideas during one of my classes (shhh don't tell my professor). I know from over the summer that she loves the apple tarts I make (see here and here). So at least one of the desserts was decided on.

I could not really take my time to make desserts this time, since I had spent the first half of the afternoon helping my brother. Afterwards, I left him to go to the kitchen and cook and bake. I made a spinach lasagna for the main dish, accompanied by a simple lettuce and corn salad.

It was my intention to start with the dough I still had in the freezer from one of the previous tarts. Unfortunately, it did not defrost on time (lack of foresight on my part), so I quickly made a new batch. I used a whole recipe for a thicker crust this time, after my parents mentioned wanting more crust in the tarts.

My parents bought Boskoop apples, which are a bit more sour, but one of the best varieties to cook. Due to the additional sourness, however, I had to sprinkle some brown sugar on top of the apples before baking. Besides these modifications to the crust and the apple type, the recipe is much the same as all the other times I made apple tarts!

Mini apple tarts

December 08, 2013
These ones were much more successful than the last ones! I managed to make the crust in a way that satisfied me, and my friends' parents loved them, as they weren't too sweet. The apple parts of these tarts are exactly the same as before, except that instead of microwaving my apple slices, I boiled them in sweetened apple syrup (aka the water used to make the apple sauce + sugar). Just the crust is different (recipe below).

---

SHORTBREAD PASTRY CRUST RECIPE (Pâte Brisée)

  Ingredients

• 250 g flour
• 125 g cold butter, cubed
• 4 tbs brown sugar
• 2-3 tbs cold water

  Procedure

1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt.
2. Add in cubed butter and rub into the flour until there is no trace of butter on its own.
3. Add water slowly until it forms a dough.
4. Let rest 1 hour.
5. Roll out and place into tin.

  Tips

     Poke full of holes with a fork and bake at 180°C for 5 to 10 minutes before using.

For better results, first cut the butter into the flour with two butter knives until it is smaller. The less the butter melts from body heat, the better.