TWD: Honey-Wheat Cookies

I'm a very healthy cook- I try to feed my family meals that are rich in nutrients, low in fat, and full of fresh ingredients. However, when it comes to baking I feel like sugar free cupcakes or fat free brownies are not worth making. These cookies are not fat free or sugar free, but they do have a wholesome quality. They are sweetened with honey, flavored with lemon zest, and contain a good amount of wheat germ (an ingredient I had never used before). But wholesome does not equal bland! These cookies were seriously amazing! Quite honestly, these took me by surprise. I was not expecting to love these- but I really did and so did Helen!


The combination of lemon and honey is so fresh and perfect and the texture is chewy and soft- what more can I say?! I cannot wait to make these again, but I will wait because Helen and I ate the whole batch ourselves and like I said, these are wholesome but I not really "healthy"! Thank you Michelle of Flourchild for choosing this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe!


Oh and P.S. I made the Chocolate Chip Cookies (last week's Tuesdays with Dorie). I thought they were ok, but a little crispy. I did like the chopped chocolate- I will definitely chop my chocolate next time I make chocolate chip cookies. They were a huge hit at the Mardi Gras party I brought them to- I took this picture when I realized that there was literally one left on the plate! Thanks to Kait of Kait's Place for choosing the recipe.


I didn't post last Tuesday because it was Mardi Gras and I was busy hitting the parades with Little Bo Peep and her Sheep:

TWD: Tartest Lemon Tart and Tiramisu Cake

Ok, bear with me, we are moving into a new apartment, I'm thirty weeks pregnant, and dear little Helen Mae is getting her incisors. I made both this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe (Tartest Lemon Tart- selected by Barb of Babette Feasts) and last week's recipe (Tiramisu Cake selected by Megan of My Baking Adventures) a few weeks ago so that I wouldn't be rushing around like I am now to write them up! So much for that plan!!


Anyway... the lemon tart was really delicious! The almond crust is absolutely foolproof and really tasty- I can't wait to try it with other nuts. The lemon filling contains the ENTIRE lemon- yep, rind and all- blended in the blender with egg, sugar, and cream. Now apparently some TWD bakers found the filling bitter because of the rind- but honestly I used the whole lemon and I didn't have any problem- I really don't know if I was just lucky or what! The filling is poured into the partially baked crust and the whole tart bakes at a pretty low temp for a good long while. The filling is almost like a lemon jelly- and although it is not the prettiest tart in the world the entire thing disappeared in a matter of minutes at the party I brought it to! In fact, I didn't even get a picture of an individual slice! I will definitely make this again.


The Tiramisu Cake was a bit of a different story. I'm still trying to weigh out the results in my head. You see, I didn't really like it very much at all- I found the cake to be dry and I thought the espresso/ kahlua syrup was too tame. I can't really say that it was awful or anything- it just wasn't great. Though the cake is not hard to make, there are quite a few components to it and it does take a good amount of time to make so I can't imagine that I'd make this again. The only thing that would keep me from saying that this was a definite miss is that my brother, my dad, and my aunt really enjoyed it (at least they said did multiple times and ate quite a few pieces each!). Honestly, I was very excited about this cake and sadly, it ended up being a let down for me.

TWD: French Yogurt Cake and Delicious Lemon Curd

I planned way ahead for Tuesdays with Dorie this week and bought all of my ingredients in advance to make sure that I would be able to bake up this delicious French Yogurt Cake selected by Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction (recipe can be found on her blog) . And then I played the waiting game. You see, it has been humid, humid, humid here and when it is not humid... it's raining- in short: horrible baking weather. Then all of a sudden it was a rainy Monday afternoon and I still had not baked up my little TWD treat. So I baked it. In the rain. And this is what happened when I tried to pop it out of the pan:


Yep, the whole bottom remained in the pan. But don't worry! I scraped it out and put it back in place and pretended that the whole thing never happened.


And then it looked like this:


Ok, so back to the actual cake. Dorie explains that this is a mainstay for French home bakers (in fact she says that it's one of the only things the French bake- and why would they with those amazing patisseries on every corner?!). It's similar to a pound cake- but without butter. The fat comes from a half cup of oil and a half cup of yogurt. I actually ended up using low-fat vanilla yogurt (gotta cut the fat where I can!) and it worked very well. Dorie gives the option of using a half a cup ground almonds in place of some of the flour, which I did, and it gave the cake a nice hearty, nutty texture.

Although you could do pretty much anything in the world with this cake, I decided to make Dorie's lemon curd. I have never used her recipe for it and I was really pleased with the results. It was very, very tart which is exactly how I like my curd! I was pretty worried about how thin it looked when I put it in the fridge last night, but this morning it had thickened perfectly and really complemented the faint flavor of lemon zest in the cake.

Because the cake is not overly sweet and because Helen Mae had a really horrible time sleeping last night (note very puffy eyes and mussed hair) I decided that I could feed it to my child for breakfast and not feel like a horribly indulgent parent:

TWD: Lemon Cup Custard

Apparently custard is something that most people have heard of but not many have actually eaten. I'm basing this on the fact that this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for Lemon Cup Custard chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles (recipe can be found on her blog- even if you aren't a custard fan you should check out her blog anyway- it's one I read regularly!) was not very well received by the TWD bakers. Lots of people complained about the "eggy" flavor and texture...well my friends, as Dorie herself pointed out, that's pretty much what custard is. Custard is eggy. If you don't like eggy, you don't like custard- and I don't like custard! But see, I knew this going into the recipe, so I thought the recipe was pretty fantastic! I thought custard was going to be really difficult to make with all the steeping the milk, baking in a water bath, etc. but actually it was extremely easy and pretty foolproof. SO...if I ever need to make custard again (for someone else obviously!) I will certainly turn to this recipe!


My poor dad LOVES spoon desserts: custards, flan, puddings, creme brulee- but my mom and I really don't like them at all- and since we are the primary bakers/dessert makers in the family he pretty much never gets these desserts unless he's at a restraunt (don't feel too bad for him though- my mom is an amazing baker- so he gets plenty of delicious non-spoon dessert treats!). Anyway, back to the recipe- I made this custard for my dad and he really loved it. I had read that some of the other bakers found the lemon flavor to be extremely light so I ended up infusing the milk with the zest of one lemon (as the recipe dictates) and then rubbing the zest of another lemon into the sugar. I also added 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract. These additions seemed to amp up the flavor just enough to give the custard a light, but decidedly lemony flavor.


I think the real triumph with this recipe is the texture of the custard. Even though I do not personally like it, I could tell that the consistency was exactly what one would look for in a custard. It is thick and firm, like flan, not creamy like pudding. All in all, I think this recipe was a success and very easy to make (oh and it was sort of nice to make something that didn't tempt me like crazy the minute it came out of the oven: see Chocolate Whisky Cake!).

Tarte au Citron

Helen Mae, Derrick (my husband), and I are house sitting this week for my lovely aunt and uncle who are vacationing in Chicago. And let me tell you, it's pretty fun. They live in a beautiful old house in Mid City- a historic New Orleans neighborhood located between Uptown and Downtown. It's a part of the city which experienced a good deal of flooding during Katrina- but it's also a part of the city that has been determined to make a comeback.My Aunt Dottie's house was one that flooded and because it was a very, very old house all of the electrical wiring was under the house instead of in the attic- you can imagine the kind of damage that occurred. It took them well over a year to get back into their old home. However, the small silver lining was that they were able to use the insurance not only to fix things back to how they used to be, but to actually do some renovation to parts of the house that they would have liked to have done before. The biggest change was an enormous extension to their kitchen- they knocked down the wall to their den and just turned the whole thing into a glorious cooking, dining, lounging space. It is absolutely my dream kitchen!!


So anyway, I've been loving cooking and baking in it for the week- and to top things off, my aunt told me to use the pie dough that she had mixed up but had been unable to use before she left. Yesterday I made this beautiful Tarte au Citron using Ina Garten's recipe for lemon curd. I had never made lemon curd before- and although mine took more than double the time to thicken on the stove- it turned out beautiful and delicious! Enjoy!