First off, apple chips. I heard about these on a PBS cooking show but didn't get all the details so make them going off what I heard and what I researched. They aren't an "official" food of my Pink and Yellow Season, but I've been doing them a lot lately. A way to snack and appease my sweet tooth and not feel too guilty. Easy and fun.
1) Heat oven to 225 degrees. One of the websites I looked at in getting a feel for doing this says she makes them every time she's been baking. She just leaves the oven on when she's done but turns it down to 225. For me it's a perfect Sunday thing to do where I can set things up and walk away without thinking about it.
2) Take a cookie sheet and put parchment down on it.
3) Slice apples thinly, or use a mandolin if you have one, but then maybe it's best to core the apple first. I don't have one, so I just do what I can with my knife and then I keep the star in the middle and pick out the seeds as I go. You might get thick slices, but it's still good, just more like dehydrated apple than apple chips. On my cookie sheets I get one big apple per sheet or 1.5 or 2 small apples per sheet.
4) If you feel like it, sprinkle with something - sugar and cinnamon, or just cinnamon maybe or lemon juice or salt. I was sprinkling the slices with a sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, which was good. But you don't really need it with Gala apples (the ones I use). I don't do sprinkle anything on them anymore.
5) Put in the oven for an hour (or so - I've noticed if I forget and leave them in too long it's not a tragedy).
6) At the end of the hour, take out and flip slices and put back in for another hour.
7) Pull out and put sheets on stove top to cool for a bit. Helps crisp up the chips.
8) Put in a not-so air tight container and don't put it in the fridge to store. This seems anti-intuitive. But if you put these in an air tight container in the fridge then they just get soggy. They still taste okay, but they're soggy. And they don't crisp up again. So, since I have mostly air tight tupperware, I've saved a take out container to hold the chips. But, they still go limp. They're just best and crispy fresh out of the oven.
They're tasty and I recommend them. I'd even call them a little addictive.
~~~
Next, lemon curd. You can use lemon curd for so much. There's a lovely lemon mousse pie
I'm thinking of making sometime that uses lemon curd, but you can also
use it on toast, pancakes, waffles, stirred into your yogurt, over your
fruit, or anything else you want a fresh bright taste. The recipes I
used say you can make up to a week ahead of time, but I have made it and
used it over the course of a month or more. Just keep refrigerated.This recipe I got off of Epicurious.com and they say it's from the December 2000 of Gourmet magazine and makes 1 2/3 cups. There's another recipe from the January 2001 Gourmet that's slightly different, but it's all the same ingredients, just makes a little less.
Ingredients:
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh lemon zest
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
Whisk together lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, and eggs in a 2-quart saucepan. Cut butter into bits and add to mixture. Cook mixture, stirring constantly, over moderately low heat until curd is thick enough to hold marks of whisk and first bubble appears on surface, about 6 minutes. I have a gas stove so I kept it on low heat so I wouldn't have the boil over I had last weekend, so it took about 10 minutes or so.
I used the whisk attachment on my handmixer and kept it on the highest setting until around the end when I switched to a lower setting so I could see whether or not the mixture was thickening. It happens fast. One minute it's watery, the next it's beginning to thicken. I also kept stirring a little longer after I turned off the burner. Don't cook too long.
You can add an egg yoke or some cornstarch to thicken it if it's not firming up, but I didn't need to. Another note is that you can use a double boiler set up to avoid the scrambled egg effect that may happen. I think keeping the burner at low and constantly stirring helps avoid that.
I happened to have a preserve container from some marmalade I had used up, so used that jar to store some of the curd because it's pretty, but Tupperware work just as well, or probably better as far as keeping it fresh is concerned. The recipes on Epicurious suggest covering the surface with plastic wrap.
~~~
Finally, lemon bars.
I got this recipe from a friend of mine who got it from her mother. It
also reminds me of a recipe my mom used to make when I was a kid, but
that I've lost track of since. If you haven't had these before, there's a
soft dough base with a lemon custard/curd "filling" and then a sprinkle
of powdered sugar on top.Base ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
Custard ingredients:
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
5 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
Topping: Powdered sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Blend butter, salt, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 2 cups sifted flour to make a soft dough. Press evenly into a greased 9x13 inch glass dish. Bake 15 to 20 minutes until golden.
Meanwhile, combine eggs, lemon peel, lemon juice, sugar and 1/4 cup sifted flour and blend until smooth. Pour over baked crust. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake 25 minutes until firm.
Cool. Dust with sifted powdered sugar.
Slice into bars when cooled.
Nice and not too sweet. Excellent with coffee or tea. Just beware of the powdered sugar flying everywhere.
And that's all for today for our continuation with the Pink and Yellow Season.
Have a great week!
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