This Week, in Baking

Hello, Dear Internet!

I figure I should catch you up on the baking I did this passed week. But I'm stupidly tired (why did I get up at 7 am, again??) and easily distracted. For example: in the time it took me to get this far, I have checked Facebook, uploaded a folder of photos to said website, checked three other websites, and drunk half a beer.

I don't know how well this will go.

Nevertheless, we must push on, or I'll have to do this tomorrow morning before my hike. . . Which isn't going to happen.

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First on my list is the lemon tarts. I adapted the recipe from this evil book:

evil evil book. . . get it here: Amazon

Though they had the odd oversight of not including any lemon zest in their lemon curd. Sacrilege. 

getting my stuff ready

eggs!!!

whisking in the cream

waiting for the water
to simmer. . .

I've made lemon curd before, but this recipe was both simple and elegant. Despite the obvious flaw in leaving out the zest (with adds the beautiful floral fragrance of lemons and helps mellow the acid brightness of the juice), this gives you a lovely, silky curd that will lend itself to any curdy applications. Though I really need to work on my kitchen timing, and I forgot to set the water to start simmering until I had finished mixing the ingredients together. . .

so this took forever. . .

But everything ended up working out fine - this is also a very forgiving lemon curd. Bonus! I made my sweet shortcrust and chilled the dough. Then a day later rolled it out and bind baked the mini tart shells.

ready for the fridge

getting ready for baking

And this morning, right before going to help set up for the baby shower these tarts were intended for, I filled the shells with the chilled lemon curd.

makeshift pastry piping bag

piping the shells

all the finished tarts!

And Blogger is being an asshole about uploading photos (thus the funny alignment going on. . .)

In addition to the lemon tarts, I also made mini savory madeleines - with rosemary and Parmesan. 

filling the madeleine molds

baked!

They were very tasty, and it was fun to make madeleines for the first time, even if they were untraditional.

And I, of course, had lots of left over lemon curd and pastry. So . . .

Lemon tart! With chocolate! My sister told me bout using a layer of chocolate on the base of a tart with liquidy fillings to help keep the pastry from getting soggy. And it is a delicious option :)

blind baking the
tart shell

adding the chocolate

adding the curds

smoothing it out

Look at the pretty tart:

so pretty!

And I can say, this is very tasty lemon curd.

So there you have it, Dear Internet, the baking I did this week! Oh wait. . . there was something else. . . Next post!