use real butter

Feeling puckery lately? If you’ve been cruising the food blogs, then most likely you’ve run across one or two or four hundred Daring Bakers brandishing their lovely Lemon Meringue Pies.

that’s right kids, we knead to bake

Jen of The Canadian Baker hosted the challenge this month and it was down to the wire for me this time. I started my treatment on Thursday and thought I’d recover with enough time to do the challenge yesterday but… things don’t always go as planned when your body gets pumped full of poison! However, I didn’t want to abandon my fellow DBers, so I managed to make a handful of tartelettes. Forgive me for the lack of detail I usually devote to my DB challenges. She’ll be right next time.

mixing the dough

pressed crust into tart molds

stirring lemony goodness into the curd

You can see I opted for tartelettes instead of the whole pie. I just love individual servings. When baking the tartelette crusts, I placed a second mold on top of each crust to hold its shape. I baked mine for 25 minutes and then removed the tops and baked the crusts uncovered for another 3 minutes to help it brown out. This worked very well, but makes a few dozen since they are so small. Once the shells were cooled, I spooned in lemon curd and topped with meringue.

a little topper over the curd

neat it up

Rather than bother with the oven again, I used my trusty propane torch to finish the tops… because I like any reason to use my propane torch *sheepish grin*. My treatment has jacked up my sense of taste, so I had to ask my official taste tester for the verdict. Jeremy gave it a big thumbs up! Thanks to Jen for the challenge and be sure to check out the rest of the fine DBer creations.

torch it

dig in

Lemon Meringue Pie
Makes one 10-inch (25 cm) pie

crust:
¾ cup (180 mL) cold butter; cut into ½-inch (1.2 cm) pieces
2 cups (475 mL) all-purpose flour
¼ cup (60 mL) granulated sugar
¼ tsp (1.2 mL) salt
⅓ cup (80 mL) ice water

filling:
2 cups (475 mL) water
1 cup (240 mL) granulated sugar
½ cup (120 mL) cornstarch
5 egg yolks, beaten
¼ cup (60 mL) butter
¾ cup (180 mL) fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp (15 mL) lemon zest
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract

meringue:
5 egg whites, room temperature
½ tsp (2.5 mL) cream of tartar
¼ tsp (1.2 mL) salt
½ tsp (2.5 mL) vanilla extract
¾ cup (180 mL) granulated sugar

For the Crust: Make sure all ingredients are as cold as possible. Using a food processor or pastry cutter and a large bowl, combine the butter, flour, sugar and salt. Process or cut in until the mixture resembles coarse meal and begins to clump together. Sprinkle with water, let rest 30 seconds and then either process very briefly or cut in with about 15 strokes of the pastry cutter, just until the dough begins to stick together and come away from the sides of the bowl. Turn onto a lightly floured work surface and press together to form a disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least 20 minutes. Allow the dough to warm slightly to room temperature if it is too hard to roll. On a lightly floured board (or countertop) roll the disk to a thickness of ⅛ inch (.3 cm). Cut a circle about 2 inches (5 cm) larger than the pie plate and transfer the pastry into the plate by folding it in half or by rolling it onto the rolling pin. Turn the pastry under, leaving an edge that hangs over the plate about ½ inch (1.2 cm). Flute decoratively. Chill for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Line the crust with foil and fill with metal pie weights or dried beans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil and continue baking for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden. Cool completely before filling.

For the Filling: Bring the water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Remove from the heat and let rest 5 minutes. Whisk the sugar and cornstarch together. Add the mixture gradually to the hot water, whisking until completely incorporated. Return to the heat and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly until the mixture comes to a boil. The mixture will be very thick. Add about 1 cup (240 mL) of the hot mixture to the beaten egg yolks, whisking until smooth. Whisking vigorously, add the warmed yolks to the pot and continue cooking, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from the heat and stir in butter until incorporated. Add the lemon juice, zest and vanilla, stirring until combined. Pour into the prepared crust. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming on the surface, and cool to room temperature.

For the Meringue: Preheat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC). Using an electric mixer beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar, salt and vanilla extract until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually, beating until it forms stiff, glossy peaks. Pile onto the cooled pie, bringing the meringue all the way over to the edge of the crust to seal it completely. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden. Cool on a rack. Serve within 6 hours to avoid a soggy crust.

Here now, I don’t have a recipe for you in the typical step-by-step today. I have been cooking, just not documenting as lovingly as usual because it’s been hectic lately and a fraction of my daylight hours have been devoted to snow worship… Not to mention the ramp up of the ARP (ass reduction plan) leaves me pretty hungry and somewhat spent, so not a lot of patience for shooting intermediate steps. But my body is adjusting quickly and I’ll be back on it soon enough. My endorphins are flowing, my muscles are rock hard, and that waistline is shrinking. I shit you not, kids. Hyperactivity has its benefits.

After my run and bike the other day, I prepared a lunch of kale and fettuccine in homemade tomato and garlic sauce and it truly rocked my world. I don’t quite understand people who go on those ridiculous fad diets - eat carbs, don’t eat carbs, eat fat, don’t eat fat, eat meat, don’t eat meat. Moderation in all things, eh? And if you’d get ye lard butt of ye couch, perhaps it wouldn’t really matter if you had that Slice of Yum.

carbo loading?

Hmmm, what else… after I made the mac nut brittle, I gave it all away. I like to make sweets, sample them, and then get rid of them. Sort of a relative ass reduction plan (rARP) because you make all of the people around you fat so that you appear relatively slimmer. It’s a joke. A joke! I wanted to make peanut brittle - the buttery kind, not the glassy kind. HolyBasil mentioned that her mom used to make it. So on a lark I looked up a recipe last night and within the hour had a batch of this:

chunky brittle and stretchy brittle

The recipe said I could pull the brittle as it cooled, so I pulled some of it, but when you break that up it sends little delicate shards of buttery brittle all over the place. Makes a mess. My dog has been licking the floor around the table more than usual today. I like it because it’s closer to toffee than the other brittle and I’m just a sucker for that stuff. Oh, but skinning Spanish peanuts is not a fun activity for a Friday night.

Peanut Brittle
from the Nut Factory

2 cups sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup water
2 cups raw Spanish peanuts
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
2 tsp baking soda

Heat and stir sugar, corn syrup and water in a heavy saucepan until sugar dissolves. Add salt. Cook over medium heat to and add peanuts at 250 degrees. Continue cooking to 290 degrees, stirring often. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and baking soda. Beat to a froth for a few seconds and pour onto well-buttered pan(s) or silpat, spreading with spatula. If desired, cool slightly and pull with forks (or fingers) to stretch thin. Break up when cold. Makes 1-1/2 pounds of peanut brittle.

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Of course, that brittle was a most welcome sight this evening after skiing a whole day at Vail. Vail is delicious. If ski resorts were desserts, Vail would be my crème brûlée.

So who got some of that mac nut brittle? One of them is Liz, my bud. She and I are tracking one another’s ARP - Liz in Oregon and me in Colorado. She is also a tele skier and you know what that means… she’s a Rock Star. In addition to a few other confections, I sent her a scarf I knit from truly gorgeous Manos del Uruguay. Like a superhero, I have many hidden powers. I just don’t have telekinesis - yet.

the colorway is called flame, for someone who burns up the slopes

A real post soon, I swear it. Unless we go to Breckenridge tomorrow :)

The word brittle conjures up so many meanings. Brittle bones, brittle failure (okay, that’s a term in mechanics, but important for all sorts of materials studies), brittle personality. I’ll admit that when I hear the word brittle my mind immediately turns to brittle-ductile transition zones in the Earth’s crust. And yet my favorite meaning of brittle is the confection of a delicious nut meat suspended in the matrix of a caramelized sugary goodness, broken into delightfully dangerous shards that melt and crunch in your mouth. Swoon.

There are two camps of people when it comes to caramelized sugar. Those who love it and those who hate/fear it. I’ve been in both camps - twice. It was pretty easy to master at sea level although I did brick my fair share of pots of hot crystallized sugar when I got a little too cocky (read careless). What a bleeping mess. But in general it was a cinch to make. Then I moved up here, as in several thousand feet up. Caramelizing sugar became a little more finicky and I fell into the hate/fear camp. My pastry course at CSR helped with my “issues”. The introduction of acids like cream of tartar or lemon juice, and the addition of corn syrup helped to stabilize the mixture as it boiled to amber loveliness. Back into the love camp.

orange zest adds a subtle floral overtone

This recipe originally calls for the use of hazelnuts. I adore hazelnuts. I hate skinning them. It is a royal pain in the ass because you can never get all of the skins removed. If I were Martha Stewart, I would have my lackeys do it, but my lackey is me. I’ll save my hazelnuts for something else. I decided to go with another highly prized, but easy to peel (read: already peeled) nut - macadamia nuts. I read somewhere that mac nuts are poisonous for dogs, so I’m careful not to let those bubs roll off the counter during chopping because Kaweah is always standing vigilant nearby.

rough chopped mac nuts and zest

One of the nice tricks I learned from our chef was that he covers the pot with the sugar, water, and corn syrup with the lid and lets it boil until steam is coming out from under the lid. Let it boil for a while to ensure that all of the sugar has dissolved. He said the steam condenses on the lid and then runs down the sides “washing” the sugar crystals down. When the sugar is dissolved, you can remove the lid. We don’t want crystals in this mixture if we can avoid it. Because when this stuff starts to boil, the water is boiling off and the concentration of sugar increases and the temperature rises which eventually takes your sugar through the various stages ending up with a gorgeous amber candy. If you have a crystal in there or if one forms (by disrupting it with air for instance), then it will seed the rest of your batch and the whole thing will turn into a dry and very hot brick of sugar. It’s depressing. You want to avoid this and allow the sugar to transform into liquid caramelized sugar. That’s why folks playing with caramelized sugar suffer all sorts of random burns - the stuff is HOT and it STICKS to you. Ouch.

stirring in the nuts and zest

Watch your sugar carefully because when it begins to turn amber, it changes quickly and you don’t want it too burnt. Remove from heat and let it cool for a minute. Stir in the other ingredients carefully. You don’t want to introduce too much air because the caramel can still seed and crystallize (this happened to another group in our class). Quickly and smoothly pour it out onto a silpat or a greased baking sheet and spread it evenly into a continuous blob. Be warned, the baking sheet will get very hot. When the brittle cools, break it up with your hands.

hence the name

If you add butter or cream to a brittle recipe, it becomes toffee. Mmmm, toffee… You can also vary the recipe and use peanuts with ground cinnamon or just play around with it. The brittle can also be ground up in a food processor (I’ve never done this) and pressed on the sides of cakes or sprinkled on a scoop of ice cream.

great for gifts or snacking

Macadamia Orange Brittle

4 oz water
14 oz sugar
4 tbsp light corn syrup
1 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped (originally calls for hazelnuts, skinned and toasted)
1/2 tsp orange zest

Line a half sheet pan with silpat or parchment. Grease or lightly butter. Combine the water, sugar, and corn syrup in a saucepan and gently stir them together with clean fingers to remove pockets of dry sugar in the pan. Cover the saucepan and bring to a boil. Once steam is escaping from under the lid, let boil for a minute then remove the lid. Don’t stir the mixture. Cook until the sugar reaches an amber color (about 315F). Remove from heat and let bubles subside for a minute. Stir in the nuts and zest with a warm spoon (so the sugar doesn’t react to the cold). Make sure the ingredients are evenly distributed. Pour mixture onto sheet pan and spread to a thickness of about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. If it cools too fast and becomes too hard to spread, put it in a 350F oven for a couple of minutes to heat it up and make it spread. Let it cool completely and then break it into pieces.