dulcis in fundo: lime

Showing posts with label lime. Show all posts

Saturday, 12 March 2011

Lemon, lime and lavender cupcakes

Sometimes I bake because it makes me happy, but most of the times I bake as it makes other people happy too. If I ate everything I make solely myself, my ass would be the size of China by now, so happily sharing my love of food with others serves three purposes: I get happy, they get happy, ass stays smallish.

The first sign of slight springiness came yesterday, when I managed to arrive home and it was still daylight, something which hadn't happened since last autumn, and which made me so happy that I decided to bake something to celebrate. My partner having been away for business for the week (in Athens nevertheless, which was unusually snowy but still full of my friends and family that HE was having fun with!) I was in food-smell-welcoming mood, so I decided to go for something he would prefer, and as he's a lemon nut (lemon cake, lemon meringue pie, lemon tart anyone?) I decided to make some lemon cupcakes. As our downstairs neighbour had given us some limes (she works in various events around London, and this week they were promoting, well... of all of things, limes...!) I decided to try a twist on the traditional, and I also added some lavender for good measure, making this the "triple L cupcakes" - Lemon, lime and lavender all in one!

I got inspired by this recipe from James Martin, who is a chef I really like, he's such an amicable guy and always makes me laugh with his additions of endless butter in Saturday Kitchen, and his usual "and if I was a Michelin star chef I would do this little thing with the spoon like that" (at which he does a fancy swirl/splat in the plate, which actually ends up looking pretty Michelin-star-chefy!). I found it bizarrely ironic that the recipe doesn't have butter (how on earth can it be a James Martin recipe? I was so shocked I almost went and licked a stick of butter!) but oil instead, and went for it... The house smelt lovely when the other half arrived, and the cupcakes were quite cute, although they got hard quite quickly. I think next time I'll substitute the oil with butter, (or even better, swede!) but for the time being, here's my adapted recipe, and the first sprigs of spring!

Lemon, lime and lavender cupcakes
Source: James Martin

Makes 12

2 eggs
85g caster sugar
240ml milk
100ml vegetable oil
300g plain flour, sifted
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
3 lemons, zest only
1 lime, zest only
1 tbsp dried lavender flowers

For the icing

100g icing sugar
1 lemon, juice only
a few dried lavender flowers to garnish

Preheat the oven to 200°C, and put some paper cupcake cases in a 12-muffin/cupcake tin. Mix the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy, then add the milk and oil and combine well. Gradually add the flour mixed with the baking powder, salt, lemon zest and lime zest. Spoon the mixture into the cupcakes cases and bake for 25-30 minutes.

In the meantime make the lemon icing by mixing the sugar with the lemon juice quickly with a wooden spoon. Cool in the fridge until the cupcakes are out of the oven and totally cooled. Spread the icing over the cooled cupcakes and decorate with the lavender flowers.

Saturday, 19 June 2010

Raspberry, lime and kirsch sorbet and a culinary present

My Greek friend Eleni, whom I know since childhood, recently came to visit us in London, and being a foodie herself she brought me this amazing culinary gift, a necklace with a little cooking pot, fork and spoon. I thought it was adorable and I had to share it with you here! It seems Greek artists/jewellers are becoming more and more inventive, and my friend told me that she also bought a similarly-themed ring for herself (can't wait to see it when I next go to Athens!).

While Eleni was here, she indulged in her love of "fruit-that-can-not-be-found-in-Greece", meaning raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and so on, but her definite favourite being raspberries, and having just bought a brand new ice cream machine, I got inspired and made my first ice cream creation - a raspberry sorbet.

Sorbets are quite basic recipe-wise, and usually consist of three ingredients, water, sugar and the fruit of choice. I wanted this to be a bit more exciting than plain raspberry-flavoured, so I infused the sugar syrup with some lime zest and added some fruity alcohol for an extra bit of yum! Since raspberries are in season, I managed to find some overripe ones in the "reduced to clear" section of my supermarket, and grabbed two packs for 60p each! It worked even better for me, as the raspberries were as ripe as I wanted them (a bit too ripe to eat perhaps, but perfect for mashing) and the sorbet ended up being much cheaper and of course much tastier than shop-bought. I was really happy when my friend's husband-to-be told me it was even better than the one he had in Scoop, which I consider one of the best places to have ice cream in London. (By the way, they need to update their website with the calendar for the 2010 events, as we went there for the "molecular gelato" day and were a bit disappointed that there was no Heston Blumenthalesque shenanigans going on.

All in all this took me about an hour to make, 30 minutes preparation and 30 minutes in the ice cream machine. It was extremely good, probably the best sorbet I've tried in my life and it disappeared very quickly. The ice cream machine I got was a bit expensive (about £60 including postage), but if you love ice cream and sorbets it's worth investing in one. The freshness of the ice cream is incomparable, and you can make whatever flavours you like, without being restricted by the limited variety of shop-bought ones. Now that I got the hang of it, prepare for a summer of sorbet and ice cream posts, I can't praise this machine enough!

Raspberry, lime and kirsch sorbet
Source: dulcis in fundo

Makes about 800ml

190g sugar
200g water
300g ripe raspberries
3 big chunks of lime peel (equal to the peel of 1/3 of a lime)
2 tbsp lime juice
A big glug of kirsch (according to taste, I put 5 tbsp in mine)

Put the water, sugar and lime peel in a saucepan and warm up until the sugar has melted. Boil for 1 minute and set aside to cool. After it's cooled a bit add the lime juice, move it to a suitable container (I use a plastic measuring jug) and put it in the freezer, so it can cool quickly.

Clean the raspberries of any "bad" bits (if required) and wash thoroughly. Put in a blender and liquidise. Pass through a thin sieve, squishing out all the flesh with a spoon and scraping around until only the seeds are left. A lot of recipes skip this step and put the raspberries whole, but I think it's really worth going the extra mile, as the seedless sorbets are so much smoother and melt-in-the-mouth than the ones containing seeds.

Remove the lime peel from the sugar syrup and add the raspberry pulp and kirsch. Put in the freezer again until cool. Pour into your ice cream machine, or if you don't have one (and it's definitely worth the money if you like ice cream and sorbets, trust me!) put in a freezable container (preferably metal) and freeze for 1 hour, then take out, squash with a fork and refreeze, repeating the process every half an hour or so.