I love receiving packages. I love coming home to see a box sitting in front of my door waiting to be taken inside to be opened.  I’d always check the tracking number of an item I’ve ordered to see if it had been delivered yet- especially if it was a new cookbook. But this time the package was not a cookbook. One day, about two weeks ago, I walked through the door and saw an open box atop the kitchen counter; the “Hungry” hubby had gotten home before me that day. I looked into the box and squealed with excitement. Meyer lemons from a dear fellow blogger!

Mary and I were exchanging emails one day and she asked me if I wanted some Meyer Lemons. I knew that she had quite the harvest this year and had been churning out one lovely sweet after another with them. She said she was picking some that weekend for the Tartelette and she would be happy to send me a bunch too.

Meyer Lemons are hard to come by in the East coast because they do not travel very well. They have a deep matte yellow exterior and the smoothest skin. They are usually described as a cross between a lemon and a tangerine and is slightly sweeter (less acidic) than a regular lemon. The most unique part of this hybrid is the zest which has a flowery tangerine-like fragrance and lends sweet and savory dishes an incredibly well-balanced lemony attribute.

I immediately reached for my favorite dessert book, The Sweet Life, by Kate Zuckerman. After I made her Almond Tea cake with Creme Brulee filling, I knew  if she had a Meyer lemon dessert – it’s gonna be good! I was right.

Meyer Lemon Curd Tart

Adapted from The Sweet Life by Kate Zuckerman

• One 8-inch Sweet Tart crust (recipe below)
• 6 egg yolks
• 1 egg
• ½ cup plus 4 tbs sugar
• ½ cup strained Meyer Lemon juice (about 3 to 4 lemons)
• Zest of 1 Meyer lemon
• Pinch of salt
• 8 tbs. (4 ounces) butter, at room temperature

Make the lemon curd. In the bowl of a bain-marie, whisk together the egg yolks, whole egg, and sugar. Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, and salt. Whisk briskly until the mixture has thickened, doubled in volume, and holds the lines of a whisk, 5 to 10 minutes.

Remove the curd from the heat and pass through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl. Discard the zest. Place the bowl in an ice bath and let cool until warm to the touch. Thoroughly whisk in the butter. At this point you can chill or bake the lemon curd.

Bake the lemon tart. Preheat oven to 325°F. Pour the lemon curd into the prepared tart shell. Place the tart on a cookie sheet and bake until the custard sets, 10 to 15 minutes. To test if the custard is set, gently tap the tart ring; if the center does not jiggle, the custard is set. If you have made the curd ahead of time and refrigerated it, the tart will need a few extra minutes in the oven to set.

Sweet Tart shell (crust)

• 16 tbs. (8oz.) butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/3 cups powdered sugar
• Zest of 1 lemon or tangerine (of course I used Meyer lemon zest)
• 2 egg yolks, at room temperature
• 2 cups plus 2 tbs. flour
• ¼ tsp. salt

Cream the butter and incorporate the eggs. Place the butter in the bowl of the stand mixer with the paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar and lemon zest (if you are using it) and beat on medium-high speed until the mixture becomes fluffy and almost white in color, approximately 6 to 8 minutes, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, and continue to beat until they are fully incorporated and the batter looks smooth and glossy, 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the dry ingredients and finish the dough. In a small bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients and add them, all at once, to the butter mixture. Use a rubber spatula and fold the dry mixture into the butter mixture with a few turns before turning on the mixer. Mix the dough at slow speed until thoroughly combined, 1 to 2 minutes. Stop the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and mix on slow speed for another 30 seconds.

            Separate the dough into two mounds. Wrap each mound in plastic wrap and press down to form two 1-inch thick disks. Transfer the dough to the refrigerator and chill for 2 hours or overnight.

Roll and blind-bake the tart dough. On a cool, dry counter surface, roll the dough into a 1/8 inch-thick circle. Line the tart pan with the dough and freeze the tart shell for ½ hour.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the shell from the freezer, line it with parchment paper, aluminum foil, or a large coffee filter, and fill it with pie weights or dried beans. Transfer the shell to the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let it sit for 10 minutes; take out the liner and weights and place the shell back in the oven. (You can save the beans to use as pie weights again.) Bake until it is golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes.

Storage

            The dough, well wrapped, can be refrigerated for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month. The baked shell, well wrapped, will keep for 2 days.

Cooking Notes:

            I had seen Alice Medrich whip up a curd in a pot over direct flame. I aspire to do the same one day but I was not going to risk my precious Meyer lemons for practice. So I adhered to the recipe and whipped it up in a bain-marie. The instruction said to use a whisk but I also used a rubber spatula in between because the whisk cannot scrape the corners effectively.

            I initially had a lot of misgivings about the dough because it appeared like it was going to be impossible to roll out. I switched to the smaller tart pans because the dough would break every time I tried to transfer it to the larger pan (actually, very colorful language escaped my lips during this time). I was making a double batch, so I had a lot of exercise with it. I finally figured that after I rolled it out on parchment paper, I had to refrigerate it for 20 minutes to firm it up again (it was also hot that day) before transferring it to the tart pan and then freeze it for 30 minutes before blind-baking it. Well, after the blind-bake, all my doubts of the crust dissipated. It looked magnificent, and unable to resist pinching the crust to taste it, I was extremely satisfied.

            I made the Meyer lemon tarts specifically to bring to a brunch that our friends were having. And since the brunch was a bit too filling, we had to wait for another hour before having some sweets. It was such torture, I tell you, since the tartlets were just beckoning to me to “Eat me! Eat me!”

            Anyway, since there were kids at the party, I told the hostess that maybe they wanted to try out half a tartlet first because it might be too sour for their young palate which was used to sweets. Actually, the “Hungry” hubby who was not fond of anything custard-like also wanted only half a tartlet. In fact everyone sampled half of a little tart.

            I eagerly dug my fork into my petite creation – breaking an extremely crunchy crust - I savored the incredible balance of sweetness and tartness that convened on my tongue. I was also very pleased with the creaminess of the curd layer which was a perfect foil for its own flavor resulting in lightness with each bite. Soon everyone, including HH, wanted another half, and after that another quarter, until the hostess horded the two remaining tartlets for those who have not had a taste of it yet.

            To say that I was elated could be defined as an understatement. I was in heaven! The taste reminded me of something but I couldn’t put my finger on it until a few days later - I had an epiphany- the lemon curd base could definitely be a base for this. All I had to do was add the cherries!

I had leftover Meyer lemon curd which I turned into an extremely flavorful pound cake. I do not have the recipe for it because I just winged it with an addition of an egg, some sugar and flour and a little baking soda until it reached the consistency of a pound cake batter. I was surprised with the result – it almost had the texture of a financier – except I did not use almond flour. Delicious!

Mary, Mary…please remember me next year when you pick your Meyer lemons. You cannot leave me without them after having me taste their enchanting essence!

        What?! An Alice Medrich recipe that has nary a hint of chocolate in it? Impossible! Hard as it is to believe, the Queen of Chocolate has transformed herself into the Master of Pure Dessert. As the lovely Anita so aptly described Alice's new tome on Desserts First, the lady from Berkely, has reinvented her approach to dessert by embracing the intrinsic flavors of ingredients.

       For this round of my “Medrich fix”, I have decided to use an element I have never tried before in my baking exploits: chestnut flour. This is used extensively in Italian baked goods and has a sweet, slightly nutty flavor. And as I have found out, goes very well with rum too!      

Chestnut Pound Cake

From Alice Medrich’s “Pure Dessert”

2 cups (9 oz) all-purpose flour

1 cup (4.5 oz) chestnut flour

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

4 large eggs, at room temperature

½ lb. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2/3 cup butter milk, at room temperature

1/3 cup rum

1 ½ cups (6oz) coarsely chopped walnuts

Equipment

Two  8 ½  by 4 ½ inch (5 cups) loaf pans

POSITION A RACK in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325 °F. Spray the pans with vegetable oil spray. (Or line the loaf pans with parchment paper.)

           In a large bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, soda, and salt together, then sift the mixture three times. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs with a fork to combine the whites and yolks; set aside.

            In a bowl of a stand mixer (use the paddle attachment) or another large bowl, beat the butter for a few seconds until creamy. Add the sugar in a steady stream and beat at medium speed (high-speed with a hand mixer) until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beating constantly, dribble the eggs into the butter mixture a little bit at a time, taking 2 to 3 minutes to add them all.

Stop the mixer and add one-third of the flour mixture and beat on low speed only until no flour is visible. Stop the mixer and add half of the buttermilk and half of the rum and beat only until the liquid is absorbed. Repeat with half of the remaining flour, then all of the remaining buttermilk and rum, and finally the remaining flour with the walnuts if using. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan(s). Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 40 minutes for a tube pan or 50 to 55 minutes for the loaves. Cool in the pan(s) on a rack for about 10 minute before unmolding.

            If using a tube pan, slide a skewer around the tube. If the sides of the pan are straight, slide a thin knife or spatula around the sides of the pan to release the cake. If using a Bundt or other decorative pan, tap one side of the pan against the counter to release the cake, then tap the other. Invert the cake onto a cooling rack. Turn the preferred side up before cooling the cake completely.

            Wrapped airtight, the cake keeps well at room temperature for up to 3days; or freeze for up to 3 months.

Cooking Notes:

            It is important to sift the flour meticulously and add it in batches so you do not deflate the air you have just beaten into the butter. Additionally, Alice said the reason a cake gets that annoying “dome-shape” is because you have either measured your flour carelessly or you have beaten your mixture too much that you have overdeveloped the gluten. Another method she has gotten into the habit of doing is when eggs were to be “beaten in one at a time”, she just whisks them first to blend the yolks and the whites, and then dribble them in – for the same reason that you do not want to interfere with the air structure that you have already formed when you creamed the butter and sugar.

            As usual, the aroma of something baking in the oven has me rooted to the stove waiting impatiently for the thing to be done. It’s like watching your creation get born, you know? The resulting pound cake had a fine crumb, a faint nutty flavor, a hint of rum, just the right amount of sweetness and pure buttery goodness – perfect with that morning cup of coffee or that nicely-brewed afternoon tea! Taking that first bite has given me a sense of open-space, rolling hills and a little round table set up with tea or coffee and me just relaxing and taking in the refreshing scenery as I have a homey slice (or two) of the freshly baked, subtlety sweet cake.

            Baking Powder and Baking Soda. Many of you probably already know this but I always had the question of: when do you use baking powder and when do you use baking soda? Why do some recipes call for both? I consulted some food science books but was not satisfied by the explanation there. Of course, I finally found the answer in my perennial favorite, The Sweet Life, by Kate Zuckerman.

             In special sections of her book labeled Beyond the Basics, she described these two as chemical leavening agents that when handled properly produce carbon dioxide when exposed to heat, giving baked goods greater volume and lighter texture. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) does not produce carbon dioxide on its own, it needs an acid like chocolate or juice or vinegar. Baking powder is a complete leavening system; it contains both baking soda and acids it can react with.

            Certain acids react with the presence of heat, while other acids dissolve and react in the presence of liquid. Double acting baking powder is a leavening agent that includes both types of acid so that carbon dioxide is produced immediately in a moist batter and then again when it is in the oven.

            So when do you use both? You want to use baking soda when there is a presence of an acid in your batter like sour cream, buttermilk and molasses. If the leavening is not enough then you add baking powder.

            And since I wanted to make sure I understood this concept correctly I emailed Kate and here is her response (which was pretty similar to the explanation in the book):

"Both baking powder and baking soda are leavening agents. Baking powder is a complete leavening system because it contains baking soda and acid, a mixture waiting to be ignited by liquid. In other words the acid and base in the powder do not react until they are moistened.

            Baking soda is basic and will not leaven a batter unless it reacts with some acidic ingredient in a given batter – buttermilk, sour cream, brown sugar and molasses. Some recipes contain both because there might be a small amount of an acidic ingredient which will react with the soda but it is not enough to leaven the whole batter so baking powder is added also."

            So baking soda is there to react and neutralize the acid in the batter. What will happen if one leaves out the baking soda and use all baking powder instead. Will my resulting baked-goods taste more acidic? That, my friends, will be the subject of another experiment.

They are macaroons. No kidding. Look closely. If you try to ignore the obvious pockmarks and the fact that they are as flat-assed as these – they are indeed the lovely French confections.

            Okay, before you all think I am delusional, I admit that this was an attempt at making macaroons. This wasn’t even supposed to be blogged about. But the vanilla buttercream turned out so well and the macaroons themselves tasted so delicious – nicely crisped, slightly chewy with the essence of hazelnuts packing such a sublime punch – it would be a crime to consider this a total failure. Right?

             I was not this positive as I took out the second tray of burnt macaroons last Saturday. The “Hungry” hubby was just coming back from an errand when he noticed the dark cloud of gloom in the kitchen.

           “Smells good, hon,” he said. “How did it go?”

            “Not good.” I replied, frustration creeping into my voice. “These look horrible. No pictures today.”

            HH did not believe me so he took a bite out of one cookie. “These are fantastic,” he enthused. “How can you say they are a failure; Where are the rest?”

            I looked at the trash bin. HH looked aghast and made a move to rescue them.

            “Leave them there!” I said sharply. “I do not want to see them!”

            “Okay, okay!” HH backed off. Talk about kitchen rage - besides I was the one with the spatula.

            HH went on to say that as a test kitchen, I cannot always expect positive results. But I was hopeful all of last week which made this setback all the more frustrating. Having never made macaroons or buttercream before and hearing about how finicky they were to make, specially the macaroons, I thought I’d give it an earnest shot. The instructions looked pretty straightforward. In fact I was not worried about the meringue at all but the filling. The thought of whisking in hot sugar had me quivering in my shoes. But the fates must be laughing at me now because the vanilla buttercream was wonderful and – well the macaroons - judge for yourself.

Hazelnut Macaroon and Vanilla ButterCream

Adapted from "The Sweet Life" by Kate Zuckerman

Hazelnut Macaroon

• About 2 cups (10 ounces) filberts (skinned hazelnuts)
• 1 (16-oz ) box confectionary sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 8 egg whites (1 cup) at room temperature
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Pinch of cream of tartar

Vanilla Buttercream

• 3 egg yolks
• ½ cup plus 2 tbs sugar
• 16 tbs (8 oz) butter, at room temperature
• 1 vanilla bean

Grind and sift the dry ingredients.

Combine the hazelnuts and 1 cup of the confectionary sugar in a nut grinder or food processor and grind to a fine powder, stopping the machine once or twice to scrape down the corners and sides and toss the nuts around.

In a dry bowl, whisk the ground nuts with the remaining confectionary sugar and salt. Set aside.

Make the meringue

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg whites on medium-high speed until they begin to foam. Add the cream of tartar and whisk until the whites are completely foamy and begin to hold the line of the whisk. Add the sugar, 2 teaspoons at a time. As you add the sugar, the whites become shiny and gain volume. Turn the mixer to slow speed, add the remaining sugar, and beat until the meringue is shiny and smooth with soft peaks.

Fold the dry ingredients into the meringue

Scrape the meringue into the dry ingredients and gently fold together until the dry ingredients have been absorbed by the meringue and the mixture is smooth and creamy. If the batter remains stiff – it holds the point of a spatula if you quickly remove it – continue folding until it has a more fluid texture. Do not work it so much that the batter becomes runny.

Pipe the cookies

Line 4 cookie sheets with parchment. Scrape half of the batter into the pastry bag with the top folded back in a 4-inch cuff, and fitted with  a round tip (#4 to #6). Unfold the cuff and twist the top of the bag close, squeezing and pushing the batter down toward the tip. Hold the bag upright, about 1 inch above the cookie sheet, and gently squeeze out small mounds 1 ¼ inches in diameter, which will settle into 1 ½ inch circles. Give the bag a gentle squeeze and then quickly pull the tip up so you control how much comes out and how the cookie ultimately takes shape. Squeeze out 6 rows of 7 cookies per cookie sheet. Allow the cookies to sit at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours, to dry out the tops. Do not bake until you can gently touch the top of a piped cookie without any residue remaining on your finger.

Make the Vanilla buttercream

In the bowl of a stand mixer with a whisk attachment (or a medium-sized stainless steel bowl on a wet rag to hold the bowl in place), combine the yolks and 2 tablespoons of the sugar and whisk for 30 seconds.

Simultaneously, in a small saucepan with the remaining ½ cup of sugar, and 3 tablespoons of water. Cook over high heat until the mixture reaches 248 °F on a candy thermometer. Scrape a vanilla bean into the boiling syrup.To test the syrup without a thermometer, dip a fork into the syrup and drizzle a bit on the counter.  The sugar droplet should cool into a pliable ball that scrapes cleanly off the counter.

Drizzle the vanilla syrup down the side of the bowl into the egg yolks, whisking them briskly to blend. Continue whisking the egg yolk mixture until the yolks have tripled in volume, hold the lines of the whisk, and have cooled. Add the butter and whisk until the buttercream is fluffy and creamy with stiff, shiny, pointy peaks.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Set two racks in the oven, one at the very top and one on the bottom.

Bake the macaroons.

Once the macaroons have dried properly, place one cookie sheet in the oven on the top shelf for 8 minutes. Open the oven door, rotate the cookie sheet, and place it on the bottom shelf. Place the second cookie sheet in the oven on the top shelf and bake for another 8 minutes. After baking first on the top shelf and then on the bottom, the cookies should be ready. Remove the sheet on the bottom, the cookies should be ready. Remove the sheet on the bottom shelf from the oven and repeat this baking process until all four cookie sheets have been baked. The macaroons should have puffed evenly, become shiny, and fallen slightly. They almost look like half a hamburger bun.

Fill and sandwich the macaroons.

Once the cookies have cooled, flip half of the cookies over. Scrape the buttercream into a pastry bag with the top folded back in a 4-inch cuff, and fitted with a 1/3-inch-diameter round tip. Unfold the cuff and twist the top of the bag closed, pushing and squeezing the buttercream down toward the tip. Hold the bag upright, about 1 inch above each inverted cookie, and gently squeeze out a small mound of buttercream, about the size of a nickel, onto the upturned cookies. Do not cover the whole cookie there should be a clear rim of cookie around the mound of buttercream. Top each cookie with a second macaroon, gently pressing down so the buttercream spreads to the edges of the sandwich.

Cooking Notes:

            Poor Kate, her instructions were so clear, I can't believe I messed them up. I made the first mistake when I ground the hazelnuts separately from the powdered sugar. They were supposed to be ground together - one cup of powdered sugar with 2 cups of filberts. I only realized this oversight after I had pulverized the nuts. What I ended up with was not fine powder as the recipe required even after I re-ground the hazelnuts with the requisite powdered sugar. They were a little bit bigger than coarse sand in texture.

            I believe this error was what caused my mixture to get runny very quickly; there was not enough dry mixture to absorb the meringue.

            When I piped the little circles on the baking sheet, they spread out pretty thinly. An important piece of information when working with ground nuts: always use a coupler with your piping tip. You never know when that renegade piece of nut will clog your tip.

            I believe the craters in the cookies were caused by my turning up the heat in my oven because the temperature dropped when I put the sheets in the oven; This led to the fan switching on (my oven has trouble keeping temp sometimes). The extreme heat change was what probably squeezed out the air pockets rapidly in the meringue, and dried it out before it can puff smoothly.

I speculate this was what happened because I tried this theory on a runny tray that I was not going to bake at all. I switched my oven 10 degrees higher than what was required to compensate for opening the oven. These cookies had smooth tops though I had trouble getting them off the parchment paper because I took them out too early

             Will I try this recipe again? Definitely. The flavors are just phenomenal! I will try a macaroon recipe with almond paste first so I could get the viscosity of the mixture down pat, learn to pipe it properly and judge the doneness of the cookies to prevent another toasted confection.

When I think about sugar art, spun sugar and sugar shards immediately come to mind. Short of sounding like a broken record, I have not yet attained such expertise in the art of caramel making so I was resigned to the fact that I was not going to have an entry for Sugar High Friday #26 hosted by Habeas Brulee. But as luck would have it, one of my Christmas purchases was "The Sweet Life Desserts from Chanterelle" by Kate Zuckerman, and on its cover was this sexy pair of caramelized pears. I was thinking why not let the caramel follow the sensual curves of this delicious winter fruit instead of me shaping it into a tangle of sugary mess.

The original recipe called for ten pears but I decided to just make four. The pears need to be ripe and have some give when you press on them. Underripe pears will turn mealy and overripe ones will not be able to withstand the cooking process.   

Honey Glazed Roasted Pears

            adapted from “The Sweet Life” by Kate Zuckerman

4 ripe pears (I used Bosc, but you can use Anjou or Bartlett too)

1 ½ cup of water

3 oz. sugar

3 oz  honey

strips of lemon zest

1 tbs. butter.

            Preheat oven to 425 °F. Set the rack on the upper shelf of the oven but leave enough space for your pears to clear the top.

            Peel the pears. Leave the stem on if it has one. Cut 1/3 inch from the base of the pear so it can stand up in the roasting pan (I used an 8x8 pan). Add the pears to the pan and add all the ingredients. You do not need to mix them up since it will all blend together as the mixture melts into a syrup in the oven.

            Place the pan on a baking sheet since the juices might boil over. Bake for about 30 minutes until all the sugar and honey have dissolved and the tops of the pears begin to brown. Remove from oven; use a rubber spatula to push the pears on their side. Return to oven for another 20 minutes. Rotate the pears to their opposite side and bake for another 20 minutes. At this time the pears will start changing color, the tops of the pears will start darkening; do not be alarmed if this happens.

            After braising the pears in the sugar-honey mixture, it is time to roast it. The pears are ready for this next process when a knife slides easily into them. Remove from oven and stand the pears  back up and baste them with the pan’s caramelized juices. Return it to the oven for another 15 minutes. Repeat this process 2 more times or until the top of the pears are almost black and the flesh is a beautiful caramel color. Remove the pears from the oven and baste one last time. The basting liquid should be a really thick syrupy caramel by now.

             Remove the pears from the roasting pan and allow to cool. Save the caramel sauce to drizzle when serving. Once the pears have cooled, remove the core with a small melon baller. You need to carve out a cone shape from the bottom to remove the pear’s seeds. To serve reheat the pears in the oven.

            The pears can be served with a dollop of whipped cream or crème fraiche.

COOKING NOTES

            The pan juices were boiling furiously while in the oven. This can cause quite a mess so be ready for it. I think it would be best to line the baking sheet with some aluminum foil extending past the sheet and curved slightly upward so it can catch the splatters.  Though this is the first recipe I tried from this cookbook, I am excited to try other recipes. Aside from being just another book on desserts, Kate explains some techniques and food science  that an amateur or professional baker might find pretty useful.  For example, in this recipe she explained the browning and caramelization concept called Maillard reaction which is the reaction of carbohydrates to the nitrogen that the protein supplies. This phenomena is responsible for the color,taste, aroma and other flavors that is introduced by the presence of heat. For the roasted pear recipe, the range of browning and flavor comes from the caramelization of different sugars present ; sucrose from sugar,fructose and glucose from the honey and finally fructose,glucose and starch from pears and to a certain lesser level the Mallaird reactions due to the proteins in the pear. I cannot wait to try another recipe from this book. This will certainly be another classic!