Tis the season for citrus fruit in California. Everywhere I look on my travels, I see orange, lemon, lime and grapefruit trees bursting with ripening fruit. I don’t have any fruit trees on my property, but my former neighbour does. She has a Meyer lemon tree that is exploding with fruit. She asked me if I would take some since she can’t possible use all the fruit her tree bears. How could I say no? Now I have a large bowl of lemons to use.
When I said lots of lemons, I meant LOTS of lemons!
My first order of business was to make a batch of lemon bars for a holiday party. I particularly like lemon bars because of the fresh, acidic citrus flavour, combined with the shortbread base. I don’t consider this recipe particularly difficult. It’s only the juicing and the zesting that take a bit of time.
Zesting and juicing fresh lemons takes time, but it’s worth it
I tried to do a bit of digging on the history of the lemon bar or square. There is a general consensus that lemon curd was created during the Renaissance and that shortbread followed thereafter. But the combination of shortbread with a layer of lemon curd baked on top did not surface until the early 1960’s when a recipe for the bars appeared in a Chicago newspaper. From the day on, lemon bars grew in popularity.
Combine all the wet ingredients, including the lemon zest
Nowadays you can find them in bakeries, patisseries and served during holidays and special occasions. If you like lemon desserts as much as I do, these will become a staple in your repertoire of desserts.
The acid freshness of the lemon curd cuts the richness of the shortbread crust
In keeping with the holiday spirit, I am baking sweets traditionally associated with this time of the year. Shortbread is an iconic biscuit (as they say in the UK for cookie) commonly associated with Christmastime.
The cookie was “invented” in Scotland all the way back in the 12th century. It was often twice baked until it hardened into a rusk, then dusted with sugar and spices. But the biscuit became more popular during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots during the 16th century, when it was often baked for family celebrations and holidays like Christmas.
The term shortbread comes from the fat or shortening used in the recipe–in this instance butter (and lots of it!) and the short crumb or crumbly consistency on the biscuit.
That’s a pound of butter
Most traditional recipes call for the dough to be pressed into the pan, pricked with fork tines and cut into wedges or rectangular biscuits after baking. I follow a recipe that is more like a drop cookie. And I like to change it up a bit and add some additional richness to the already rich dough.
Shortbread is a 1-2-3 cookie; one part sugar (this can be a combination of granulated sugar and icing sugar), two parts butter and three parts flour. My recipe also calls for cornstarch, which is supposed to soften the proteins in the flour. As such, the texture of my shortbread cookies is so crumbly, the cookie practically melts in your mouth.
I use granulated sugar, icing sugar and cornstarch
Shortbread diehards would probably object to the use of cornstarch in the recipe, but I have had great success with this recipe so I’m not going to mess with it.
I like to add chocolate to my recipe so I take a Toblerone bar, which has delicious milk chocolate and nougat in it, and chop it up into small chunks before adding it into the dough.
Mmm! Toblerone
I use a small 1/2 inch cookie scoop to form balls and bake them for approximately 15 minutes.
Half-inch cookies are just the right size
There should be NO browning on the cookie. If it browns, it’s been in the oven too long.
Shortbreads are subtly sweet and deeply rich. They are a perfect companion to a cup of tea or a hot toddy. And they most certainly make a great addition to your dessert table–or even a great gift at the holidays.
These cookies are very crumbly, and very rich
Shortbread Cookies with Toblerone Chunks
1 pound unsalted butter, softened
1 Cup Icing Sugar
3 Cups All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Cornstarch
1 Tsp Vanilla extract
1 Toblerone chocolate bar, chopped into small chunks
Directions:
Beat the butter, icing sugar, flour and cornstarch until fluffy. add splash of vanilla and combine. Sprinkle chocolate chunks into batter and mix until just combined. Spoon onto a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees–make sure the cookies do not brown! The cookies will still be soft when you remove them from the oven. Place them on a rack to cook.
It’s holiday season and you know what that means: BAKING!!!
My oven is still misbehaving (don’t ask), but I have managed to whip up some cookies without too much difficulty, although a properly heated oven would mean more predictable bakes.
Nevertheless, my desire to bake has outweighed my patience for the oven to be repaired.
I dug through my recipe box and found this lovely recipe, brought to you by Bonnie Stern. It appeared in the Weekend Post back in 2006 and I’ve held on to it since then. My girlfriend, Katie, was the one who shared it with me. She was trying to find ways to get more iron into her son’s diet. This recipe calls for molasses, which is quite high in iron. It also calls for whole wheat flour or nutri flour, which is a blend of unbleached flour with the bran added back in, so it bakes like an all purpose flour. I didn’t have either of these so I just used all purpose flour, but that means these cookies aren’t quite as nutritious as the recipe says they could be. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.
A mixture of melted butter, sugar, eggs and black strap molasses
You may be in a rush to make the dough and immediately bake the cookies, but the instructions call for chilling the dough for at least an hour. Don’t skip this step. It gives the melted butter the chance to solidify into the dough. It then becomes much easier to form the dough into balls so that when the cookies bake, they come out perfectly shaped with a nice crackle.
Chill the cookie dough: don’t skip this step!
I roll the dough in turbinado sugar, which gives the cookies a nice finish.
Roll the cookie dough balls in turbinado sugar
Enjoy these with a glass of egg nog, milk or a hot toddy….they have a nice flavour of molasses, cinnamon and ginger, perfect for chilly winter nights!
Ginger molasses crackle cookies fresh out of the oven
Ginger Molasses Crackle Cookies
2/3 Cup of melted butter or vegetable oil (I use butter)
1 Cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/4 Cup molasses
2 Cups flour (preferably whole wheat or nutri blend)
2 Tsp ground ginger
1 Tsp cinnamon
1 Tsp baking powder
1 Tsp baking soda
1/4 Tsp salt
1/2 Cup of coarse sugar for dipping (eg. turbinado sugar)
In large bowl, combine butter with sugar. Beat in egg and molasses.
Mix or sift flour with remaining dry ingredients.
Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Shape dough into 1 Tbsp balls and roll in coarse sugar. Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper and press down lightly. Leave enough space for other cookies.
Bake in a 350F preheated oven for approximately 10 minutes until crackle-looking but still soft in the centre. Let cool before transferring to a wire rack.
As previously mentioned, my brand-spanking new oven isn’t working. It hasn’t since we got it over a MONTH ago.
At first I thought maybe it was me. Maybe we had to become better acquainted with each other. After a few called to customer service, I was persuaded to try troubleshooting the problem before the company sent out a repair person. Well, after tinkering with the oven for a week and told the company it just wasn’t working.
The repairman who came turned out to be the most misogynistic piece of garbage I have ever met. I can’t recall a time in recent memory when a man was so overtly demeaning to me. I was so upset and called the company to complain. My oven was still broken, requiring a new part. I made it clear that repair man was not allowed anywhere near the premises. The new part was ordered and sent. A new repair company was retained and they have yet to show up to fix the oven. I am non-plussed. Actually, I am more than non-plussed. I am angry, disappointed, frustrated and I also feel helpless. I don’t like feeling like I am at the mercy of a company that took my money and delivered a substandard product and beyond crappy customer service.
To make myself feel better, I went on a road trip today with a friend of mine. We were on a mission. If I couldn’t bake in my own kitchen, I was going to live vicariously through the small country bake shops in farm country. We drove north to Sonoma County.
Our first stop was Mom’s Apple Pie in Sebastopol. It’s been around since 1984. In my head I was thinking, “oh! that’s not so long ago. I was just a kid then.” But then I remembered I’m getting old. That means the pie shop has been around for 35 years! THIRTY FIVE YEARS!!! We ordered ahead of time because it happens to be the week of Thanksgiving and we would have been sorely disappointed with the selection of pies if we had simply shown up. I got two kinds; strawberry rhubarb and apricot.
I did not get their namesake pie because I intend to bake an apple pie of my own. I also tried a mixed berry turnover while I was there, which was delicious. It was especially yummy because my stomach was growling after the two hour drive.
That’s Apricot on the left and Strawberry Rhubarb on the right. But who can tell?
After leaving Mom’s we headed to Hale’s Orchard and picked up a bunch of blemished apples, which they refer to as “seconds.” I call them C-grade apples, which aren’t nice enough to sell in a grocery store, but certainly tasty enough and useful enough to turn into apple sauce or pies. So I bought 25 pounds. Normally I would get one variety, but since I don’t know anything about the varieties that are grown out here, I heeded the advice of the nice woman at the fruit stand and bought a variety. She said the best sauces and pies come from a mixture of apples.
A variety of C grade apples from Sonoma County
From Hale’s we made a pit stop at Andy’s market, an independent grocery store that has wonderful produce, a great selection of meats and cheeses and lots of great bulk food.
But we saved the best for last! We went to Wild Flour Bakery in Freestone. The *main* street, if you could call it that, is a small unassuming road off the main highway that you would miss altogether if you blinked. There are a few shops clustered together, but that’s it.
We went just days before US Thanksgiving so it was busier than normal, according to my travel companion, Elizabeth, who frequents this bakery quite regularly. The breads and bakes are outstanding!!! I got three loaves–a Fougasse that was stuffed with cheese, herbs and tomato. I got another flat bread, also stuffed with cheese and herbs, as well as a garlic loaf.
Beautiful breads from Wild Flour Bakery
I also got two scones; one sweet, the other savoury. Both were delicious, especially the chocolate walnut. Yum!
If you are in the area, these places are definitely worth checking out.
