Category Archives: Lemon

Easter Biscuits

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Another Easter recipe for you! This one’s a bit more old fashioned, and would make a great afternoon tea over the holiday weekend.

It comes from Alexa Johnston’s sequel to Ladies, A Plate – A Second Helping. They’re rather lovely biscuits – crisp and lemony, with crunchy sugar on top.

The dough is a delicate one to deal with – so chill it well before you roll it out so it’s good and firm. I rolled out half and left the remainder in the fridge, then started again.

Easter Biscuits

5oz butter, slightly softened
4oz caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
2 egg yolks
8oz flour
¼ cup currants
pinch mixed spice

for the glaze:
1 egg white
extra caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar with the lemon zest. Add the egg yolks and mix well. Work in the sifted flour, spice and currants until you have a fairly stiff paste. Put the dough in the fridge in a covered bowl, and leave there for 10-15 minutes.

Sprinkle the bench with cornflour to help the dough from sticking, and roll it out fairly thinly (I think 3-5mm), and cut biscuits (I used a 7-8cm fluted cutter). Place carefully on the lined baking trays, and brush with the lightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar.

Bake for 10-15 minutes – mine only took 10, and watch them carefully, as they turn from lightly golden to crispily brown very quickly. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins

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Some days, you need a bright and cheery morning or afternoon tea to help get you through the day. And things don’t come much brighter or cheerier than lemon muffins. Aren’t they sweet?

Muffins have rather fallen out of fashion, landing in the ‘dated’ pile with a definite bump. I don’t make them very often anymore, but they’re a nice blast from the past when I do.

Like almost every other New Zealand household, we have an ageing copy of Alison Holst’s Marvellous Muffins. I understand the Crunchy Lemon Muffins is one of the most popular recipes from that book, so I present it here, in a slightly healthier form. Disclaimer – I didn’t actually adapt it myself; the Holsts also put out a ‘healthy and delicious’ version of a muffin book, which has lots of modified recipes which cut down on the butter and sugar.  I did still hesitate before adding a ‘healthy’ tag to this recipe; they’re probably not food for every day, but if you’re going to munch muffins, they might as well be these ones!

If you’re finding work a bit hard to get back into, I recommend whipping up a bunch of these (if you can’t be bothered faffing around with the crunchy topping, just leave it out completely), freezing, and popping one in your lunchbox every morning, so it’s thawed and ready to cheer you up at morning tea time.

Crunchy Lemon Muffins by Alison Holst

2¼ cups self-raising flour, sifted
¾ cup sugar
1 large lemon, finely grated rind and juice
½ cup rice bran or canola oil
1 cup trim milk
1 large egg
½ tsp salt

¼ cup lemon juice (you might need to top up the juice from the lemon above)
¼ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 210°(C), and have a rack for the muffins just below the middle of the oven. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin pan (I use a quick spritz of rice bran oil cooking spray).

Place the self-raising flour and sugar into a medium-sized bowl and mix with a fork.

In another, larger bowl, place the lemon rind, oil, milk, egg and salt, and beat with a fork until well combined.

Tip the dry ingredients onto the liquid mixture all at once, and fold everything together until the flour is just mixed in. This step is the trick to good muffins. You want the ingredients just mixed together until there are no more huge pockets of flour. The mixture should not be smooth or too well combined.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared pan evenly. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the muffins spring back (I usually check with a skewer, too).  While they’re cooking, get your measured sugar and lemon juice at the ready.

Once baked, leave the muffins in their tin for about 5 minutes – until you can just get them out of the tin without them breaking up. Lift them out carefully onto a cooling rack.

Working quickly, mix together the lemon juice and sugar, and brush this mixture on top of all the hot muffins, making sure they all get a bit of undissolved sugar on top. Once you’ve done the tops, keep brushing on the sides and bottoms of the muffins, until you run out of mixture. Leave them on the rack until they’re cold and crunchy.

Lemon Curd Layer Cake

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I made this Lemon Layer Cake a few weeks ago. I had a day of cooking and photographing food to give my blog a bit of a new look. I wanted to keep a lemon-y theme, so this was the obvious choice!

Lemon Curd Layer Cake

Cake:
8oz unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1½ cups self-raising flour
1¼ cups plain flour
¾ cup milk
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
2 tsp finely grated lemon zest

To Layer:
Lemon Curd/Honey (home-made or store-bought)
Lemon Buttercream (see below)

Preheat the oven to 180°. Grease and line three round cake tins (I lined the base and lightly floured the sides).

Cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually, and beat until fluffy (about 3 minutes in an electric mixer). Add the eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, combine the (sifted) flours, and add to the cake mixture in four parts, alternating with the milk, lemon juice and zest, and beating well after each addition.

Divide the batter among the cake tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in their tins for 10 minutes, then cool completely on a wire rack.

When completely cooled, spread the first cake with lemon curd, then lemon buttercream, place the second cake on top and repeat. Ice the top cake (and you could do the sides too) with lemon buttercream, and finish with a swirl of lemon curd to decorate. Coconut would be yummy too.

Lemon Buttercream

8oz unsalted butter, softened
about 6 cups icing sugar
½ cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the icing sugar, and then the lemon juice and zest. Beat until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the remaining icing sugar until the icing is thick enough to spread nicely.

Spanish Tapas & Paella – Time for a Sangria

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I had some girlfriends coming over for dinner a couple of weekends ago… I love having people over for dinner so I can try cooking new things, and spend a day in my kitchen putting a meal together. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but I love it.

I wanted to try a new type of cuisine for the girls. I’ve been wanting to try some Spanish cooking for ages, so what better opportunity?! Plus, after a few weeks of dreary winter weather (this was before the beautiful spring days we’ve been having in Wellington), I decided we need some colour. So Spain seemed a good choice on both counts.

I don’t know about you, but my cooking background has mainly been a good grounding in ‘kiwi’ home cooking (which I see as based on British cooking, but a bit lighter, with some Asian flavours and a few unique dishes thrown in). Like most New Zealanders, I cook some South East Asian food at home, as well as Indian, a little Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Mexican (probably Tex Mex admittedly), and French and Italian.

But I’ve never really cooked Spanish food at home. Spanish cuisine, especially tapas, has had a resurgence in restaurants over the last few years, but the food, other than the odd paella, hasn’t made it as far as my home dining table. Am I alone in this?

The thing that I loved about putting a tapas menu together was I could pick lots of little dishes, and prepare most of them in advance. And because they were all new – if one flopped, no problem! I could pretend it never existed! Plenty more food to go round!

This was the menu for the evening:

Spanish Tapas & Paella Party

- White Sangria -
———————————–
- Home Made Catalan Tomato Bread -
- Garlic Prawns & Potatoes -
- Pork & Almond Meatballs with Tomato Dipping Sauce -
- Beef & Spinach Empanadas -
- Catalan Spinach -
- Spanish Salad with Smokey Dressing -
————————————
- Paella with Chicken and Chorizo -
————————————
- Tarta de Santiago (St. James’ Cake) -

Clearly, we needed to start the night off with a few drinks. A white sangria was in order.

There are thousands of sangria recipes out there. It would appear that every Spanish family has their own, and I imagine it’s one of those things that nobody makes quite right except your family. Like pav. I based my Sangria recipe on several I found at www.spain-recipes.com. It was gorgeous – I especially loved the apple juice ice cubes. Can’t wait to try it again in summer using my favourite Central Otago stonefruit. 

White Sangria

Apple juice, for ice cubes
1¼ cups water
1 bunch fresh mint
½ cup sugar
3 cinnamon sticks
3½ cups wine
1 pear, cut into chunks or slices
1 peach, pitted and sliced
2 nectarines, pitted and sliced
1 large orange, sliced crosswise
2 small lemons, sliced crosswise
1 lime, sliced crosswise 
3 cups sparkling apple cider

The day before…
Pour the apple juice into two ice cube trays and freeze.

Combine the water, half the bunch of mint leaves, the sugar and cinnamon sticks in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil over a medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to cool. Once the syrup is at room temperature, remove the mint leaves and cinnamon sticks and discard.

Pour the syrup into a large container – if you can fit your serving vessel (punch bowl or jug) in your fridge, then use that. I found it easier to use a big plastic container (needs to be able to hold 2-3 litres). Add the wine and prepared fruit. Mix well, cover and chill overnight. Get the apple cider in the fridge chilling, too.

Just before serving
Pour the syrup, wine and fruit mix into your punch bowl or serving jug(s), and mix in the (chilled) apple cider. Add your apple juice ice cubes and the remaining fresh mint leaves from yesterday. P.S., I like the way my fruit randomly arranged itself into a face on the side of the jug!

This mixture filled two big water jugs like this one – there’s a lot of fruit to fit in! For a starter drink at a dinner party, it serves about 8-10. I had some left over so I re-used the apple juice trick and froze sangria ice cubes. I think they’ll make a nice addition to a G&T. And I’m sure there’s a use for all that wine-soaked fruit once you’ve finished the sangria, if you’re into recycling.

By the way, this post has got me thinking about what other parts of the global food map are missing from my repertoire. I don’t really know any cooking from eastern Europe or Russia (except Beef Stroganoff and the less said about that, the better). And I don’t think I cook any South American food. I love making Moroccan dishes but that’s only a small part of the African continent… what other cuisines would you love to try cooking at home?

Lemon & Ginger drink syrup

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A few weeks ago I went to a class at Wellington’s Handmade 2011 on preserving. Anna Kelly taught a great class in making jam, infused olive oil and this delicious drink syrup. It is really easy and takes hardly any time at all. A pretty bottle of this syrup would make such a great gift! And between you and me, a hot drink made with this syrup and a wee dash of whiskey is perfect on winter evenings.

Anna Kelly’s Lemon & Ginger Elixir

3 large lemons, juice and grated rind
25g fresh ginger, grated. You don’t even have to peel it!
750g white sugar
1/2 Tbsp citric acid
2 cups boiling water

Place all ingredients into a large heatproof bowl. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then cover and leave overnight. Strain the syrup through a sieve lined with cheesecloth. Pour into sterilised bottles or jars and seal.

Make a hot or cold drink with one part syrup to four parts water. I haven’t tried it but it would probably also be delicious poured lightly over muffins when they’ve just come out of the oven, to make a crunchy topping. Or in cocktails with mint and gin. Any other ideas?