Lemon Bars

The gooey, sweet, lemon filling pairs nicely with the buttery, crumbly crust in these lemon bars.  The crust is so buttery and tender that these lemon bars should be eaten with a fork since the crust can crumble under pressure.  This recipe is simple to master and the lemon bars can be made in about an hour or less.  This lemon bar recipe was one of my favorite recipes growing up and I actually prefer this over the more time consuming Lemon Meringue Tarts. 

Pâte Sucrée

This Pâte Sucrée recipe produces a crispy, buttery, sweet cookie-like crust.  This crust is perfect for pies and tarts with runny and creamy fillings, such as my Chocolate Pudding Pie, Meyer Lemon Meringue Tart, or Blueberry Crumb Tart, as shown below. 

This recipe produces enough crust for 3 – 9-inch pies or tarts.  You can halve this recipe and still have enough crust for a rectangular tart pan or 3 individual-sized tart pans.  

Mini Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes

These bite-sized Mini Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes are refreshing and light; perfect for dessert on a warm day.  When you bite into the mini cupcake, you immediately taste sweet strawberries from the preserves; then the subtle citrus flavor of lemon shines through from the cupcake. 

Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream

This Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream is a beautiful pink color and is perfect with a variety of cupcake flavors.  In the above picture, I’ve paired this buttercream with Mini Lemon Cupcakes in my Mini Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes.  

Mini Lemon Cupcakes

These mini lemon cupcakes are one of my favorite cupcake recipes.  The lemon flavor is refreshing, but not overpowering, and the cake is light and moist.  These cupcakes are perfect filled with Lemon Curd and topped with Vanilla Bean Swiss Meringue Buttercream in my Lemon Meringue Cupcakes, or filled with Vanilla Bean Strawberry Preserves and topped with Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream in my Mini Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes. 

Vanilla Bean Strawberry Preserves

These strawberry preserves are made by cooking the strawberries until the fruit’s natural pectin thickens the mixture.  I make these preserves in small enough batches so that it gets eaten before I have to can them using glass jars.  This is perfect accompaniment to your breakfast toast, bagel, or English muffin, or you can use these preserves in my Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream or to fill cupcakes, such as my Mini Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups strawberries, stems removed and cut into quarters
• 1½ cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed
• ½ vanilla bean, split and scraped

Combine the strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, and vanilla bean seeds into a medium sized saucepan.  Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved and the strawberries start releasing their juice. 

Bring to a boil (mixture will become frothy and double, or even triple, in volume) and boil for 10-12 minutes.  The strawberries will start to break down and become somewhat translucent and the syrup should be slightly thick. 

Let mixture cool to room temperature uncovered (about 30 minutes to an hour).  The mixture will thicken up even more as it cools.  Store the preserves in an airtight container in your refrigerator. 

Blueberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

This Blueberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake is my favorite coffee cake recipe.  The flavor of blueberries is enhanced by the subtle flavor of cream cheese and finished with cinnamon sugar.  This cake is light and stays moist due to the cream cheese.  

There are certain sweets that I prefer to eat right out of the oven (when they’re still warm), such as apple pie, brownies, and cookies, but this cake is one of the few sweets that I actually enjoy more at room temperature (when the subtle flavor of the cream cheese shines through more).  This is the perfect cake to make on a Sunday and take as a snack to work on Monday.  

Dessert at Hawks Restaurant: The Hawks Bar

If you’re ever in Northern California, try Hawks Restaurant in Granite Bay.  Hawks is an upscale restaurant that has menus that vary with the season.  I recommend that you make a reservation though, as they can get booked completely.  When I ate there for lunch over the winter, I had their rich, creamy puree of wild mushroom soup with sherry gastrique and fried shallots.  For the main course, I shared their buttermilk fried chicken, which was nice and crispy without being greasy, along with house-made macaroni and cheese.  Both courses were delicious! 

At Hawks Restaurant, their dessert menu changes seasonally as well.  However, one constant dessert is this Hawks Bar.    The Hawks bar starts with a rich chocolate brownie base.  Next is a chewy caramel layer and above that is a crisp caramelized rice crispy layer.  Pastry cream is piped on top and resting gently on the pastry cream is a thin layer of dark chocolate.  Served alongside the Hawks bar is house-made Valrhona cocoa nib gelato.  This was probably one of the best desserts I’ve ever had!  And don’t forget to accompany this with their café au lait!

Dessert at Bardessono: S'mores

If you’re ever in the Napa Valley, try Lucy Restaurant & Bar at Bardessono, a luxury hotel and spa in Yountville, California.  While I was there, I tried their dessert, which was a twist on the classic S'mores.  The S’mores plate presentation is simple, yet elegant.  Rich chocolate sauce is drizzled across the plate.  The base of the S’mores is a rich chocolate torte (tasting almost like a flourless chocolate cake) topped with marshmallow gelato that was gently torched before serving.  Resting against the toasted marshmallow gelato is a house-made graham cracker (and probably one of the best graham crackers I’ve ever had).  To the left is Lucy Restaurant’s peanut butter powder.  The peanut butter powder melted in your mouth, leaving the soft taste of peanuts.  This dessert was perfect paired with their café latte. 

Boston Cream Cupcakes

In my twist of the classic Boston Cream Pie, I filled light Two Egg Yellow Chiffon Cupcakes with creamy Vanilla Bean Custard and piped Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream on top. 

Ingredients:

• 24 Two Egg Yellow Chiffon Cupcakes, cooled
• 1 recipe Vanilla Bean Custard, refrigerated until set
• 1 recipe Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Take a small paring knife and core the each cupcake, leaving ¼ inch of cake on the bottom and about ½ an inch of cake on the sides. 

Fill the center of each cupcake with vanilla custard.  I found that using a small spoon and simply spooning in the custard works perfectly. 

Using a spatula, add the chocolate swiss meringue buttercream to a piping bag set with a large star tip.  Pipe the frosting on the cupcakes, starting at the edge and moving in a smooth, circular motion as you bring the tip above the center of each cupcake. 

Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

This Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream is the perfect topping for almost any cake or cupcake.  It has the distinct flavor of chocolate without giving up the light, creamy texture of a Vanilla Bean Swiss Meringue Buttercream. 

Two Egg Yellow Chiffon Cupcakes

This Two Egg Yellow Chiffon Cupcake recipe is your basic yellow chiffon cake.  In a chiffon cake, egg whites are beaten stiff, then folded into the cake batter to achieve a light, fluffy cake.  This is a very versatile cake and can be paired with a variety of fillings and frostings. 

One of my personal favorite combinations is this Two-Egg Yellow Chiffon Cake filled with Vanilla Bean Custard and frosted with Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream, as shown in my Boston Cream Cupcakes. 

Vanilla Bean Custard

This creamy, vanilla bean custard makes a nice filling in layer cakes or my Boston Cream Cupcakes. 

The custard is simple to make and thickens up nicely to support the weight of a cake layer.  It can also be eaten by itself or piped into chocolate cups for individual desserts.  

Vanilla Bean Infused Simple Syrup

Having vanilla infused simple syrup handy is a nice way to sweeten your everyday drinks, such as tea and iced coffee.  This recipe is very easy to make and can be stored in an airtight container up to a couple weeks.  

Ingredients:

• 1 vanilla bean pod, split and scraped
• 1 cup water
• 1½ cups sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Bring the water, sugar, and vanilla bean seeds to a boil in a saucepan.  Let boil for 1 minute.  Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.  Let syrup cool to room temperature and store in an airtight container.

Vanilla Beans: How to Split and Scrape

Using fresh vanilla beans can drastically improve the flavor of your dessert, especially in creamy desserts such as crème brûlée and my vanilla bean custard.  When a recipe calls for a vanilla bean, it usually utilizes only the vanilla bean seeds, so you will have to split the vanilla bean pod and scrape the middle to get the seeds out.  You can purchase vanilla beans from online retailers, cooking stores (such as Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, and Dean & Deluca) or well stocked grocery stores.  

The Process:

1. Split the Bean: Take a sharp paring knife and poke a hole through the vanilla bean so the bean lies flat when you hold the knife horizontally (see picture above).  Hold the vanilla bean in place on the side facing the dull part of your knife.   Using short, sawing motions pull the paring knife across the entire vanilla bean so that it splits into two even halves.  
2. Scrape the seeds: Hold the dull side of your paring knife firmly against the middle of the vanilla bean half and scrape across the entire bean.  If your vanilla bean half folds over at the edges, you may need to repeat this motion with the dull side of the tip of the paring knife to get the seeds underneath each fold.  Repeat with the other half.  

Note: 
Using fresh vanilla bean pods makes the splitting and scraping process much easier.  Your vanilla bean pod should be pliable and slightly sticky.  When the vanilla bean is old and dry, it will crack when you try to split it and the vanilla bean seeds will get all over the place.  When the vanilla bean is fresh, the pod is flexible and fairly easy to split and the seeds are moist enough to stick together when scraped.

Suggestion:
Vanilla Sugar - Since most recipes do not utilize the vanilla bean pod after the seeds have been scraped, I like to add the pods to an airtight container of granulated sugar.  The longer the sugar and vanilla bean pods sit together, the more the sugar gains the aroma and flavor of vanilla.  You can then use this vanilla sugar in dessert recipes or to sweeten drinks.  

Meyer Lemon Meringue Tart

The billowy, sweet Vanilla Bean Meringue offsets the rich, tartness of the lemon custard in this Meyer lemon meringue tart.

I adapted this recipe from Bouchon's Tarte au Citron.   Instead of using Bouchon’s Pine Nut Crust, I made the tart shell with a Pâte Sucrée and shaped it to fit a rectangular tart pan.  The Meyer lemon filling is made using the sabayon method, where the egg mixture is whisked and slowly heated over simmering water until it has thickened and increased in volume.  I piped meringue on top and used a torch to get the nice brown color. 

Vanilla Bean Meringue

If you have some extra egg whites lying around, a good way to use them is in this vanilla bean meringue.  Light, fluffy, sweet meringue makes a nice contrast to rich or tart fillings in pies and tarts, such as the filling in my Meyer Lemon Meringue Tart.