(from The Pastry Affair)

Truer words have never been spoken.  *sigh*

I don’t recall exactly how I heard about this, but once I did, I had to try it.  (I kind of love my friend Mark’s limoncello-like, lemon-infused vodka; this was a natural progression of interests, so to speak.)  The recipe is here, and he is absolutely spot on with the comment that, “though most people gasp at the sight of a five pound bag of sugar, they never complain when they taste the finished product.”

I made two batches.  The first one infused for a week before becoming creamy.  The second one infused much longer (read: I didn’t get around to making it into the final product for a while.), though I can’t exactly say for sure that one is more lemony than the other.  Let’s just say they’re both yummy.

No, no, my friends, this is a post about how to use 30 lbs of sugar in 30 days.

Yes.  30 POUNDS OF SUGAR.

(another 5 lbs was drawn from another bag)

Some things you can make:

2 batches of creamy limoncello

quince marmalade

snow sugared cranberries

3 many-appled galettes

a giant batch of peppermint bark chocolate chip cookies

a triple batch of chocolate meringues

a double batch of chai spiced cookies

lemon queresimili

little lemon puddings

smoked sea salt caramels

meyer lemon vanilla bean marmalade

an Irish car bomb cake

lemon chiffon cupcakes with lemon mascarpone icing

a lemon chiffon layer cake with lemon whipped cream

sour cream chocolate chip coffee cake

chocolate self-saucing puddings (I’m counting this, even though it was an epic FAIL.)

chocolate soft-centered puddings

an apple sharlotka

Guilty:  This post is mostly for my records.

We’ve an abundance of beautiful Meyer lemons, and I got it in my head to make some lemon chiffon cupcakes.  The great Google provided a few different recipes, as did our home cookbooks.  I tweaked one, referencing another, and came up with this:

Meyer Lemon Chiffon Cupcakes

makes ~ 26 cupcakes. ish.

Cupcake Ingredients:

3 cups cake flour

1 cup sugar, divided (1/2 cup, 1/2 cup)

2 tsp baking powder

4 eggs, separated

3/4 cup water

lemon juice from 2 lemons (roughly 1/4 cup)

1 cup vegetable oil

zest of 1 lemon (or 2, up to you!)

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp + pinch cream of tartar

Lemon Mascarpone Icing Ingredients:

1/2 cup mascarpone

1/2 cup chilled heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tbsp sugar (or more, to taste)

zest of 1 Meyer lemon

Go on! Do it!

Preheat the oven to 375F.  Line your muffin tins with cupcake liners.

In a large bowl, sift the flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, and baking powder.

In a medium bowl, whisk the 4 egg yolks, water, lemon juice, zest, vanilla, and oil.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring to combine.

In a clean, non-reactive bowl, whisk the egg whites until you have soft peaks.  Add the generous 1/4 tsp cream of tartar and continue whisking.  Gradually add in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, continuing to whisk until you have medium/stiff peaks.

Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Fill your cupcakes to about 3/4 full.  Bake at 375F for 15-20 minutes, or until lightly golden brown.  Let cool completely before icing.

Make icing:

Whisk all the icing ingredients together till it’s beautiful and icing-y.  Lick it all up.  Top your cooled cupcakes with icing.

EDIT: Upon further review, I think I need to work on this recipe to make the cake a bit more moist and light.  It’s a bit on the dry side, and not nearly as airy as I would want my chiffon cake to be.  I’ll keep ya posted.

from here

from Maxistentialism

Er.  The post you didn’t even know you were waiting for.

It’s a really good post.  Promise.

(Drumroll, please.)

IT’S THE GREAT APPLE TASTE-OFF!

What’s in your bag there?  What’s that?  EIGHTEEN kinds of apples??

I know you’re as fired up as I am.

Bring it.

(Argh.  What is happening with this gallery??  Ignore the last two rows.  They aren’t really there.)

I don’t know about you, but when I walk into the produce section of Berkeley Bowl and find myself facing a massive variety of apples, I just wanna taste ‘em all.  So that’s what I did.

(Author’s note:  There were other varieties of apples that did not make it to the tasting.  I forewent the Red Delicious, Granny Smith, et al. for reasons I feel I need not specify.)

I had every intention of doing this scientifically, but let’s face it, I was an art major.  M suggested we come up with categories and rate each apple on a scale of 1 – 10.  He’s the engineer in the family.  But this was my baby.  So we had categories.  And then lots of adjectives like, “perfumy!” and “almost mushy :( ” and “honey finish” and “complex tartness.”

(Look at the color!)

We tried a slice or two of each apple, took notes, and moved on to the next apple.  I thought short and hard about a palate cleanser between apples, but nothing came of it.  (M had some coffee — does that count?)  As for the order of tasting, with nothing really to go on, we went in alphabetical order.

The ‘winners’?  It was close.  We had three favorites:

Aurora: “light, crisp”  ”floral, perfumy, beautiful”

Honey Crisp: “crisp, juicy, Fuji-like”  ”strong perfume”  ”honey, floral, sweet”

Jazz: “juicy!”  ”super crisp”  ”complex, balanced tart/sweet, a bit floral”

OK, guys, huddle in for a final group photo:

You might be thinking, “What on earth do you do with 18 partially sliced apples?”  Good question.

To answer: You save the three apples you really enjoyed and eat them later, because eating 18+ slices of apples really fills you up.  Then, you take the other fifteen apples and you turn them into Many Apple Galettes (using your awesome recipe), and you bring them to your folks’ Christmas Eve party.

You might also be thinking, “Gosh, I wonder what kind of music you listen to when you’re tasting apples?”

To answer: What else?  Barney’s Get Psyched Mix (blog version).  (Thanks, Kevin.)

We’ll not need to be seeing the doctor for a while, methinks.  Thanks, Berkeley Bowl!

But if you’re a teacher, it also means an abundance of chocolates from your students.

What’s that??  You also  have a surplus of peppermint bark?

Well let’s ameliorate that problem now, shall we?

Peppermint bark chocolate chip cookies.

Oh.  Yes.

(I was totally not harshin’ on Heidi in the previous post about pretty cranberries.  I adore this woman.  I occasionally want to be her.  Particularly if she keeps coming up with yumminess like this.)

They’re made with whole wheat pastry flour!  That makes them, um, healthy.