TWD: Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Short post today--things have been crazy over the past few weeks.  My poor dear Mom broke her ankle in 3 places and has been in a wheelchair and had surgery on it yesterday, so I'm kinda running between her house & mine.  Thankfully, this is just the kind of thing that she loves so I was excited to make them for us to share!

I was super thrilled as well to find meyer lemons at Walmart last week, so I used those for these instead of regular lemons.  I also reduced the poppyseeds by half b/c 2 tablespoons just seemed like a ton to me.

These were great--thanks so much to Betsy of A Cup of Sweetness for choosing this week's recipe.  Check out her blog or page 10 of Dorie's Baking from My Home to Yours for the recipe, and check out the TWD leave your link post to see who baked along!

meyer lemon yogurt cake

As you know, I recently happened upon some lovely meyer lemons and have been trying to decide how to use them up.  After being sick for the past two weeks they were beginning to shrivel up, so I knew I had to act quickly!  I contemplated muffins, meyer lemon curd, a few types of bundt and pound cakes, but decided upon this Yogurt Cake form Ina Garten that I had seen on so many blogs.  I didn't make many changes, but did double the recipe which was perfect for my 6 mini-loaf pan which I had not used in quite some time,and the exact amount of zest and juice that my lemons gave! 

The cakes are extremely moist and springy with just the right lemon flavor.  I baked them up and have nibbled on one, and wrapped the remainder up nicely and to be frozen and either given away or pulled out for those rainy spring afternoons when I may just need a bit of sunshine. 

Meyer Lemon Yogurt Cake
recipe adapted from Ina Garten

makes 1 loaf pan's worth of cake

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 cup plain yogurt (I used non-fat)
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
2 t. Meyer lemon zest (from 2 lemons)
1/2 t. vanilla
1/2 cup vegetable oil



glaze:
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan and line with parchment and then grease and flour the pan.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together yogurt, sugar, eggs, zest, and vanilla.

4. Combine wet and dry ingredients until only just blended. Whisk in vegetable oil.

5. Bake for 50 minutes. For mini-loaves bake for about 30-35 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs.

6. While the cake bakes, cook your lemon juice with your sugar over medium heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture runs clear. Poke holes in cake and pour lemon glaze over the cake while still warm from the oven.  Allow syrup mixture to soak in before removing loaves and serving or wrapping to freeze.

TWD...just the wrong week

I think that the Toasted Coconut Custard Tart that Beryl chose for this week's baking assignment sounds AMAZING...but I didn't make it.

For a few reasons:
1. I just finished making last week's recipe
2. Hubs will not eat it.
3. Most of my co-workers will not eat it.
4. I am in a deep blue funk and do NOT need anymore treats lying around the house to tempt me towards emotional binge-eating.
5. I'm still a bit under-the-weather and not feeling up to any major bake-tastic feats.
6. I'm contemplating a bit of a break in baking (at least in baking just for the sake of baking and challenges) in an effort to really focus on my health and getting in shape. I feel like I need a kick start, and the blueness of my moods lately is making me mindlessly nosh on whatever is lying about. Not a good choice.

I did make the Honey-Wheat cookies from last week (chosen by Flourchild). I mean, they're full of wheat germ, honey, and lemon zest with only a stick of butter and half a cup of sugar--this is diet food! ;)

I made them for my mommy. I invited her over last Thursday after one of her dear friends had some very serious complications during a medical procedure that caused her to go into a coma and to pass away early this week. She needed to be mothered a little bit. I fed her quiche and made these cookies and served them with some lemon curd which my mommy loves. And I hugged her and encouraged her and we cried together. It has been an emotional week. The cookies were good, but the comfort was better.

Well, here's a little sunshine recipe to cheer us up:

Lemon Curd
from Martha Stewart Everyday Food, Sept. 2009

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp. finely grated lemon zest, plus 2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 8 large egg yolks (reserve whites for another use
• 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter cut into 1/2 in. pieces

In a medium saucepan, off heat, whisk together sugar, zest, and egg yolks; whisk in lemon juice and salt.

Add butter and place pan over medium-high. Cook, whisking constantly, until butter has melted, misture is thick enough to coat the back of a sppon, and small bubbles form around the edge of pan, about 5 min. (do not boil)

Remove pan from heat while continuing to whisk. Pour curd through a fine-mesh sieve into a glass bowl.i usually skip this Press plastic wrap against the survace of curd and refrigerate until cool. (To store, refrigerate in an airtight container, up to 2 weeks) in my experience, it also freezes well

on illness and quiche

Well, I'm sick again (what else is new right?). Dr. John, who I work for and who has been my doctor since I was 2 years old (they made me get a "grown up doctor" when I first got chronic stuff in '07, but I still see him for little stuff while I'm working) checked me today at work and said that my poor little throat was as red as my scrubs :( about this red. So now I'm on some loverly antibiotics once again as well as decongestants. February has been a bad health month, and I was seriously getting the blues about it earlier. I feel like I just sleep and do the bare minimum of house cleaning on the weekends (which I am blessed to have 3 days long) but my body is still constantly worn out and attracts these germs like a magnet! (I'm sure working at a pediatric doctor's office does not help...)

this is how I feel


this too

Well class, if you have been following along, you will remember that I like to eat eggs when I am sick. (I just had to buy 2 1/2 dozen more this week). I had also recently purchased some leeks with the goal of making some leek potato soup. That sounded good, but I feel that it's hard to make soup for just one person ('cause we know hubs won't be eatin' any!) and I was wanting something especially bad-for-you-comforting. Enter...mushroom leek & bacon quiche!!

Now this is an amalgamation of multiple recipes online and in cookbooks--I just considered what I had on hand and how much time I wanted to actually spend preparing and baking it, and threw it together. But it was GOOD. I considered eating, almost had, ok, definitely ate half of the quiche right after it came out of the oven *shame* It is just so good and gooey and savory and comforty. sigh.

So here is the recipe--I cheated and used a frozen pie crust and precooked bacon, but hey, a girl's gotta do what she can when she feels like crap!

Mushroom, Leek & Bacon Quiche

3 leeks--whites and a few inches of light green, sliced
8-10 small mushrooms (i used baby bellas), sliced
4 slices bacon (i used precooked, but you can fry your own and then saute the leeks & mushrooms in about 1 tbsp of the grease instead of the butter)
3 tbsp. butter
pinch kosher salt
approx 2 cups shredded cheese (i used a mix of mozzarella & "fiesta blend"--just use what you have on hand)
4 eggs
3/4 cup half & half (or a combo of skim milk & cream, which is basically the same ;) )
dash pepper
pinch nutmeg
1 unbaked deep dish pie crust

Preheat the oven to 350 F
-Saute the leeks and mushrooms in butter over medium heat until soft (about 10-15 minutes) add a bit of kosher salt if using unsalted butter. Add bacon to mixture towards the end to let it heat back up. Remove mixture from heat and allow to cool for a few minutes, then place in the pie crust.

-Cover vegetable/bacon mixture with cheese
-Whisk together eggs, half & half, pepper, & nutmeg. Pour over cheese, pressing down to make sure that all the dry ingredients are covered. (i sprinkled a few bits of bacon over the top...just for fun)

-Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
-Cool on a rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.

yum


even yummer

Of course, you can probably make this healthier by using skim milk, sauteing in olive oil rather than butter, cutting back on the cheese and eliminating the bacon...but what sick girl wants to eat that?

One thing (other than the quiche) that made my day a little more joyful--I found a wonderful surprise at Walmart...

MEYER LEMONS!!!

So I had never even heard of these things before entering the blogging world, but for the past year I have been looking every time I go to the grocery and lusting after the recipes made with them online. I was so excited to find these! Bowling Green, while not such po-dunk country town is lacking a lot of the wonderful culinary treats that you see in cities that have such exciting places as Whole Foods & Trader Joes (I mean, you can't even get Dutch-processed cocoa powder here!). So I snatched these up with dreams (and trepidation) of what to make. Any suggestions? I won't be baking until the weekend (got to get over this bug) so if you have a favorite recipe highlighting meyer lemons, please share it! I'm hoping that the store won't break my heart like it did years ago with blood oranges--I find them once and then they never return :(

I also got the wheat germ which was intended for the TWD cookies this week, which I obviously didn't make. Hopefully will do those over the weekend (it's becoming Saturdays with Dorie for me lately)

Hope you are all staying away from illnesses!