Another incarnation...

of lemon and berries. I can't stop.
I took a break from my recent craziness on Saturday to make a birthday cake for my cousin. She's lucky it fell during my 2 week break from classes! I really wanted something light in color and considered making a white cake, but I'm not a big fan because I don't think they're very flavorful. I found a great recipe (from Dorie Greenspan, as I often do) for lemon cake and butter cream frosting, both really light (I don't like when lemon cake is yellow-y, I think it looks fake). It was actually the "Perfect Party Cake" recipe, which is somewhat well-known in the strange little world of obsessed bakers.
I was surprised by the cake-very light and fluffy...almost melt-y (sorry, other baking bloggers-I can't bring myself to use the term "mouth feel"). Yum! I was worried about the frosting at first because when I tried it, I thought it just tasted like butter. But once it covered the cake, the combination of the two was delicious and very lemony! I filled the cake with blackberry jam, and decorated the top with fresh blackberries and homemade candied lemon slices. I think it came out quite beautifully, if I may say so!

Then we sliced it with a cleaver.

Such a little tart...

I suppose 11 months is long enough to let pass by without a new post. I've become slightly obsessed with photograzing lately (take a look, it's practically food erotica). I saw a picture of strawberry tarts (Confabulation in the Kitchen) and decide I had to make them. I used a different pâte brisée, but it's a pretty universal recipe. I followed her suggestion of eliminating the butter and cutting the sugar in the filling (I used 1/3 c. instead of a full cup).

Ingredients:

2 lb sliced strawberries

1/3 c. sugar

1 recipe double layer pâte brisée

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Toss sugar with strawberries.

3. Use 3/4 of the pâte brisée for the bottom crust in 4 small tart pans. Allow some dough to hang over the edges, as the dough will shrink during baking. Weigh bottom of crust with pie beads; bake for 15 minutes.

4. Dust flour over bottom crusts.

5. Divide strawberries and sugar into the tart pans
6. Cut remaining dough into slices and arrange into lattice work over top of strawberries.

Bake 30 more minutes.

The star of the show:


Tools of the trade:
f

Preparing the dough:




Ready for the oven:


And, I present you with delicious:


Actually, I haven't tasted it yet...it could be awful!

I also decided I want to make some sort of rosemary-olive oil bread soon, so I bought a rosemary plant...the nearby spearmint smelled so good, I had to buy that as well. Here are my new additions! Let's all cross our fingers that I don't kill them, as I do every other living thing I've tried to care for (except children).





Now I'm done, as Marie says it's rude for me to blog while watching a movie with her.