The divine lemon cake

My dear little daughter is quite a fussy eater. If she agrees to milk one week, she will make up for it by refusing it for the next two weeks. If she likes idli with chutney in the morning; in the afternoon, she wants it without chutney; she will like upma without banana in the morning but will not mind it with banana at noon. And she fiercely refuses to have anything to do with fruits. Except apple, but then she doesn't realize she is having it as we disguise it within idlis, dosas and pancakes.

In my quest for simple baking recipes, I stumbled upon a divine little dessert - the lemon bar. Or as I eventually ended up making it, the lemon cake with shortbread. The first time turned out to be too tangy, too sweet, oh too much lemony. This was for these reasons: the shortbread dough was lesser than anticipated, so the filling overwhelmed the edges, instead of sitting comfortably within the shortbread; the lemon juice was a tad too much and the sugar a tad too less. So yesterday I tried to prepare it again. It turned out beautifully. Here are the measures:

For the shortbread:

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar (powdered)
1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
 A pinch of salt

Making the shortbread dough is key here because the filling is fairly simple to prepare. Into a bowl, add the butter and sugar. Use an electric beater to mix them till soft and creamy. In a small bowl, mix the flour and salt. Add the flour mix into the first bowl and beat it again. Be assured, the mix is supposed to look like bread crumbs and not like a proper dough. Take a baking pan and pour this mix into it. With your hands, spread it evenly across the pan. Press down with your palm so it is a compact mix now.
Preheat the  oven to 375 degree C for 5 minutes. Place the shortbread pan in the oven and bake for 15 minutes or until the shortbread begins to become golden brown at the edges. Remove from oven and let it cool for about 20 minutes.

While the shortbread cools, get about preparing the filling.

For the filling:

1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon lemon zest
3 tablespoon all purpose flour

Take a large bowl. Add the granulated sugar and beat the 2 eggs into it till it becomes soft and creamy. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest into the mix. (Before removing the zest, clean the lemons well. Make sure that the rind of the lemons are a clear yellow without any blemishes. Remove the zest from the lemons before squeezing their juice.) Beat them well. Then fold in the flour.

Take the shortbread pan, pour in the filling and place it back in the oven. Let it bake for 15-18 minutes or until the filling has firmed. Take it out and let it cool for about 15-20 minutes. Once cooled, place it on a plate and cut in. Yumm...

Enjoy!

We begin da' baking...

Joy and I, both of us, love watching cookery shows. If we are not sitting down to watch anything specific on the telly, we will settle for a good cookery show. While we were often enthusiastic about experimenting with savoury dishes, the desserts intimidated us. Finally, Masterchef Australia broke us and as 2012 hit midway, we bought a small oven. And thus our ambitious efforts were born. We started off with a simple sponge cake - the first four tries of our oven was to make this sponge cake. The first time we made it, it got too fluffy and collapsed in on itself - though, to be honest, it was yummy. The second time, it didn't fluff up at all, though again, it was quite delicious. It was like eating a softer biscuit. Of course, we trawled the internet for each cake's postmortem. The first time we had beaten the eggs and flour too excessively. The second time the flour was a little more than necessary and the eggs were beaten a little too less. The next two efforts were better overall, however, they weren't something that we would have loved to serve up for friends.

Following these disappointments, we were dejected and there followed a lull in our baking endeavours. We would take turns to look at the oven wistfully a few times a day. Gathering up our spirits took a while. A few weeks later, we planned an alternative approach. We said, "well maybe not the cake, how about trying for something smaller, a cupcake recipe perhaps?" Very tentatively, we made a plain cupcake. We took a bite off the first one, chewed it and our eyes and taste buds lit up. It was GOOD. Our eyes twinkled and we could hear each other think "We should make this more often" before it was articulated aloud. Then, we laughed. And then, we spent the next couple of days wading through the entire batch with a song in our hearts. Hahahaha I exaggerate, of course. The days didn't go down like that. In hindsight, that cupcake gets us an A+ for simply trying it. Otherwise, I might have spent forever sending wistful looks at the oven.

Here, then, was the genesis for our weekend cupcake capers.

We often made little variations in fillings and choice of flours. I am still too intimidated to make any bold changes.

I will pen down these simple recipes for cupcakes and other desserts that we have tried so far and we plan to prepare next.