Lime Bars with Cardamom Shortbread Crust

Are you there, butter? It’s me, Kari. It’s been two days since my last consumption. But fear not, ye fellow unholy butter adherents, these zesty lime bars are just the ticket to redemption, especially if you’re looking for an afterword to last week’s Key lime pie. As with all things bless’ed by the mind of Alice Medrich, these lime bars come together in a snap and taste every skosh as delicious as you’d want them to: zingy and lime-saturated with a cardamom bite to the vanilla shortbread, just for good measure. Fresh grated ginger would also be at home in this recipe, and Apt. 2B Baking Co. whipped up a version last year that does just that. This is the last of the California citrus recipes for sometime, but there’s plenty in the archives to help keep your head above these wintry waters.

Lime Bars with Cardamom Shortbread Crust
Adapted from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

I highly recommend using fresh-ground cardamom straight from the pod. It can't be beat!

For the shortbread crust
1 cup all-purpose flour 
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground cardamom, to taste (depends on how fresh your spice is!)
8 tablespoons (one stick) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line the bottom and sides of an 8" x 8" baking pan with foil. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Drizzle the butter and vanilla over the top and whisk it all together until evenly moistened. I was using cardamom straight from the pods, so a half-teaspoon was a goodly amount; taste, and add more if if your cardamom isn't as pronounced as you want it to be. Press the dough evenly across the bottom of the pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until crust is golden brown. Meanwhile make the filling!

For the filling
1 cup granulated sugar (Medrich adds an additional two tablespoons)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons lime zest
1/2 cup strained, fresh-pressed lime juice

2.  Stir together the sugar and flour in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs, then the zest and lime juice. When the crust is ready, turn down the oven to 300 degrees F. Pour the filling onto the hot crust and bake for 20 to 25 minutes longer until filling no longer jiggles when tapped.

3.  Set on a rack to cool completely in the pan. Once cool, lift up the foil liner and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into nine, 16, or 25 squares (or whatever!), and top with a little powdered sugar for looks if so inclined. Will keep for three days covered in the fridge; taste is still good for longer, but the shortbread softens.

Nibby Bittersweet Chocolate Brownies

Brownies are a rare guest on this blog. I'm not entirely sure why, since I completely love them, but let's just say that it's tough work finding a recipe that lives up to the glorious boxed brownies of my childhood. Even to this day, the Duncan Hines box photos are so dang alluring; the brownies always have that perfect crackled top crust! And they look so fudgy! And they're photographed in a heaping stack! That ridiculously chocolate pudding packet brownie is the one that I want, and this ditty from Alice Medrich is pretty spot-on to my idea of perfect.

Even if you're anti-nuts-in-brownies—I am too—consider giving the cacao nibs a whirl. Walnuts sure don't have a place in the brownie of my dreams, but the nibs add a fun amount of chocolatey crunch to an otherwise deeply fudgy and soft brownie; you won't go wrong either way. Bonus: after that behemoth pork pie from earlier this week, a one-hour, two-bowl recipe is a most welcome thing.

 
Nibby Bittersweet Brownies
Adapted from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

Check out Apt. 2B Baking Co. for a completely gorgeous photo of her nibby brownies. Mine don't do the total fudginess as much justice as does hers!

8 ounces chopped bittersweet chocolate
3 ounces unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
heaping 1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt
1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
3 to 4 tablespoons cacao nibs, optional, divided
Couple pinches of flaky salt to sprinkle on top, optional

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, and line the bottom and sides of an 8” x 8” or 9” x 9” pan with foil and grease lightly with butter.

2.  Put the chopped chocolate and butter in a medium heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are completely melted. Set aside to cool somewhat. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt until the mixture is lighter in color, about three minutes (excellent arm workout!), or with a handheld mixer on medium, about two minutes.

3. While whisking, slowly pour the melted chocolate mixture into the eggs. Whisk to combine, then fold in the flour and two tablespoons of the cacao nibs. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle with the remaining one or two tablespoons of cacao nibs and flaky salt if desired. Slide into the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted into the brownies comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes (mine took 35, but start checking at 20 minutes anyway). Cool completely before cutting into squares; I added more sea salt once they were cooled. These brownies tasted the most chocolately on day two, right out of the fridge (with some coffee!).

Labneh Tart with Sesame Brittle and Mixed-Pepper Tuiles

With all the crap going on in the earth, I often question why I even bother to write about baked goods or keep this blog at all. Sometimes it’s comforting to have a eked out a microscopic personal pocket of the internet, but a lot of the time I feel totally useless for using my (very) modest soapbox to talk your ears off about, for instance, this labneh tart and how much I love Alice Medrich. Two icons from my childhood recently passed away, one who captured my heart and the other my imagination, and with the bad business of Amendement 1 in North Carolina (but yay Obama, finally! Although marriage equality should be a fundamental right, not a state issue.) and the untold amounts of frustrating news that I am, by virtue of a computer-based job, able to read every day, this space sometimes feels alienating to me for its lack of more important content.

I’m so lucky to find time to do all of this baking and equally lucky to have time to write this blog, and I don’t often acknowledge it here because it feels artificial to move from something serious into something buttery. But I’ve been sitting for nearly a week on a blog post about all of the “lasts” I am planning for as I prepare to move to Maine, and it ended up reading like a long list of awesome shit that somehow I was complaining about. It didn’t really get at what I’ve been feeling lately either, which is totally sad and frustrated about a lot of political and social goings-on, but equally happy and grateful for the personal progress I’m making in my own life. Sometimes this blog only reflects the latter because it’s more in keeping with the medium, and while this post itself isn’t meant to make up for all the levity or start any specific discussions, I did just want my handful of checkers-in to know that I’m thinking about how to strike a balance. I admire Lottie + Doof so much for that reason: he’s often brief and light, but is able with equal seriousness to talk about baking and politics and disagree with people and critique the food culture. I aspire.

Which sort of inelegantly brings me to this tart, of which I made three for the most recent edition of the Mod Attelet supper club. I’ve been collaborating with those folks for just about the better part of a year, working initially just on desserts and eventually on several other elements, and our latest menu was by far my favorite. It was totally special not just because it was my last, but also because we served my and Joey’s homebrewed spiced session ale, two of my very good friends attended, I made a three-part dessert, we smoked a pig, and the night was full of some super social folks who were still mingling when I went home at 1:00 a.m. The dinner brought out my favorite aspects of these supper clubs: an awesome, cohesive menu and a totally jazzed group of strangers who clicked and had a great night. Plus this tart, which is utterly simple, tangy, and drop-dead delicious. And balanced. Perhaps the most important quality and my goal for this blog moving forward. Thanks for reading, as always!

Labneh (Lebni) Tart
Barely adapted from Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert

Never had labneh (also spelled lebni and lebneh)? It's essentially sour cream meets cream cheese in a way better, tangier form, and you can definitely find it at Whole Foods, Middle Eastern markets, and specialty stores. I spread the leftover labneh on toasted baguettes with olives, tomato, olive oil, and mint: a super breakfast! 

Also, Medrich calls for 9 ½-inch tart pans, which I do not have, so I used 8-inch tart pans. The cooking time was actually in the same range. I did remove about two tablespoons of the tart dough to accommodate the difference in pan size so that my crust would stay thin around the edges.  

Crust
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

Filling
3 large eggs
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups labneh (kefir cheese)
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten with a pinch of salt

1.  Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine the butter with the sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add the flour and mix (a fork will do) just until well blended. Dough might seem oily, but it will work!

2.  Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up sides of a 8 inch tart pan with a removable bottom to make a thin, even layer; to avoid ending up with extra-thick edges, press the dough squarely into the corners of the pan. To even out all crust, I pushed a flat-bottomed dry measuring cup along the bottom, then into all the edges and up the sides. Place tart pan on a cookie sheet when finished.

3.  Bake until the crust is a deep, golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes, checking after about 15 minutes to see if the dough has puffed up from the bottom of the pan. If it has, press the dough down gently with the back of a spoon and prick it a few times with a fork.

4.  While the crust is baking, make the filling. Medrich specifies the order in which ingredients are mixed here, saying it has a big impact on the smoothness of the texture:  In a medium bowl whisk the eggs with the sugar, salt, and vanilla. Then whisk in the cheese until very smooth.

5.  When the crust is ready, remove it from the oven and turn the temperature down to 300 degrees F. Brush the bottom of the crust with a thin layer of the beaten egg yolk to moisture-proof it. Return the crust to the oven for one minute to set the yolk.

6.  Pour the filling into the hot crust and spread it evenly. Return the tart to the oven and bake until the filling is set around the edges but, when the pan is nudged, quivers like very soft Jell-O in the center, about 15 to 20 minutes (all three times, my tarts were finished at 19 minutes). Check often in the last few minutes as overbaking will ruin the silky-smooth texture of the filling. Cool the tart completely on a rack before removing the tart pan ring; it will firm up as it cools. Refrigerate if not serving within three hours. Leftovers (yeah right!) will keep, covered and refrigerated, for about four days.

Sesame Brittle
Adapted from Pure Dessert

I altered the instructions after making this a few times since I didn't have any issues with stickiness, which the original recipe seemed concerned with. Nice and easy!

½ cup granulated sugar
⅛ teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
¼ cup sesame seeds (I used black and white)

1.  Spread a thin slick of oil on a cookie sheet and set it aside. Mix the sugar and salt in a dry, light-colored 10-inch skillet. Set the pan over medium-high heat, and cook without stirring until edges of mixture start to turn clear. Turn the heat down to medium, and shake the pan while continuing to cook as long as syrup remains clear. This first part takes only a few minutes.

2.  When the syrup begins to darken, use a rubber spatula to push it around until all the sugar is melted and evenly colored; if some parts of syrup darken more quickly than others, lift pan off heat and continue to stir until the color balances. When the syrup looks pale amber, add in the sesame seeds and stir to coat. Continue stirring until syrup turns dark reddish amber; immediately spread brittle onto cookie sheet in a thin layer, using the spatula to flatten and make it as thin as you can. You can shape the brittle--carefully!--while it’s still warm, or allow it to cool as is until hard, about 30 minutes. To achieve small pieces for the tart garnish, I smashed the brittle in a plastic bag. In a sealed container, the leftovers kept for about a week before the texture softened.

Chocolate Bourbon Pudding Squares

I am impatiently awaiting spring to spring. We've gone from 50 to 90 to 30 degrees and back, but there is nary a rhubarb stalk—the baker’s flag for spring—at my farmers market stalls. With recipes like this jam, this drink, this cookie, and this pie or this tart calling to be made, it felt unnatural to venture back into my winter fruit reserves and preserves, hence: chocolate. These pudding squares aren't a thumb-twiddling option or runner-up to rhubarb, even in spite of my using them as a seasonal in-betweener. This is a bona fide delicious dessert that has been calling ever since I hoarded Alice Medrich’s cookie book from the library and wondered just how in gravity’s name the pudding sides stay up like that. They are so good—like a more boss brownie. 

I made these late last week for a special occasion that has become all-too infrequent over the past few months, namely a visit from my beautiful musical friends in Richmond who came up to DC to play a show in our newly refurbished basement space. We stayed up until the wee hours drinking a leftover bottle of New Year’s (maybe?) champagne and shooting the shit with the yarn-spinner of all time before waking up early to scarf bagels and visit RVA for the day. From whence, we decided it would be a pro decision to make and consume 18 deviled eggs (albeit delicious ones!) in less than two hours, which has led to my forever swearing off my latest favorite food; I still feel a little green. The visit revolved around food and talks and was way too short, all as always, and it made me even more antsy for spring and summer, which are both best spent lazing on rocks and flailing in the James. Or, as it were, eating chocolate-bourbon pudding bars and waiting for the rhubarb to show up. Hope you like these!


Chocolate Bourbon Pudding Squares
Adapted from Alice Medrich's Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy


For the crust
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and still warm
¼ cup light brown sugar, packed
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chips or chopped bar

For the filling
¼ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 ½ cups whole milk
½ cup heavy cream
5 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate with up to 62% cacao, finely chopped
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon bourbon (Medrich uses rum)

1.  Line an 8-inch square metal baking pan on the bottom and all four sides with foil. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Position a rack in the lower third of the oven.

2.  In a medium bowl, combine the melted butter with the brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add the flour and mix just until blended. The dough will be soft and oily; that’s fine! Press the dough evenly over the bottom of the lined pan. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the crust is deep golden brown at the edges. Remove the pan from the oven and immediately sprinkle the chopped chocolate over the hot crust. Let stand for about five minutes to melt the chocolate. Use a rubber or offset spatula to spread the chocolate over the surface of the crust in a thin but thorough layer. Let the crust cool and then refrigerate while you make filling, until chocolate is set.

3.  In a heavy, medium saucepan, whisk the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and salt to blend. Add about three to four tablespoons of the milk and whisk to form a smooth paste. Whisk in the remaining milk and the cream. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly with a flat-ended heatproof spatula or wooden spoon and scraping the bottom, sides, and corners of the pan to prevent scalding until the pudding thickens and begins to bubble at the edges, five or six minutes (mine actually went for eight). Add the chocolate, vanilla, and rum and stir a bit faster to smooth out the pudding for about 1 ½ minutes. Scrape the hot pudding onto the crust and level it with one or two strokes of the spatula.

4.  Let the pudding cool, undisturbed (without mixing, jiggling, or spooning out a taste), at room temperature for one hour. Refrigerate the pan, uncovered, until the pudding is completely cool. Cover it and chill for at least several hours or overnight.

5.  Use the edges of the foil to lift the bars from the pan and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into 16 squares. Medrich also suggests cutting round “bars” with a biscuit cutter, but I couldn’t bear to leave the scraps! Dust with cocoa powder and/or powdered sugar to serve. Squares will keep covered in the fridge for about three days.

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

The book from whence these and those cookies came is property of the DC Public Library (and therefore you!). I should have disclosed in my previous post that I am—with the help of my amazing librarian friend Bobbie—quickly assuming acquaintance with a multitude of cookbooks (and young adult fiction), but this one from Alice Medrich is by far my most favorite. Had Bobbie not brought it to our charming yet slovenly home, I almost certainly never would have used it. And were it also not for Bobbie and DCPL, I would not have seen Twin Peaks, read Just Kids, heard that infernal Alban Berg opera that Joey has been playing, or figured out this whole graphic novel thing so easily. Bobbie and I met three years ago on Craigslist when I was just a DC naïf looking for a home, and since then it has been a totally edifying friendship involving lots of rad shit from water snakes, bicycles, and dancing to a shameless love of cultural pulp and romcoms (but also Pride and Prejudice! Which I guess is sort of a romcom too.).

I wouldn’t be here or nearly as happy without Bobbie, and these cookies wouldn’t be here or nearly as tasty without the DC Public Library. This is the first wheat-free cookie recipe using alternative flours that I have ever totally adored; they were also loved by my great pal Tory who is gluten-free, and they were deemed tolerably delightful by my dear housemate Susan who has professed a strong unhappiness with wheat-free goods. They are thin and crispy—fast becoming my favorite cookie qualities—and the crumb tastes sweet and buttery, not powdery and Play-Doh-esque, which I sometimes equate with gluten-free desserts. I think that you could love them, and so will the beautiful Bobbies your life. 

Wheat-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from Alice Medrich's Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy

I used a scoop slightly smaller than that called for by Medrich and still came out with the 60 cookies predicted by this recipe. She adds one cup of coarsely chopped pecans as well, but I'm not so into that, so I upped the chocolate from 12 to 15 ounces. These are wheat-free, and will be considered gluten-free by your strictest eaters as long as you buy flours that have not come into contact with any wheat. Bob's Red Mill is always a reliable brand, and check your local co-op or farmers' market to see what's in stock.

1 cup + 3 tablespoons oat flour
1 cup brown rice flour, superfine if you have it
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons potato starch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon aluminum-free baking soda
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
15 ounces hand-chopped chocolate chunks or large chips (semi-sweet will not overpower the delicate flours; use bittersweet if you want to get thwacked in the face with chocolate flavor)

1.  Combine the flours, potato starch, salt, baking soda and xanthan gum in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly with a whisk. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, sugars and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs. Stir the flour mixture into the wet mixture. With a rubber spatula, mix the batter briskly for about 45 seconds to activate the xanthan gum, but don't overbeat or you risk gummy cookies (blech). Stir in the chocolate. If possible, let the dough stand for one to two hours at room temperature, or cover and refrigerate overnight.

2.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper or foil dull side up. Using a 1 1/2-tablespoon cookie scoop (Medrich calls for 2 tablespoons), place mounds of cookie dough at least two inches apart on the sheets. Bake the cookies for 12 to 14 minutes until they are golden brown, rotating pans from front to back and top to bottom halfway through. Cookies will be soft when you remove pans from oven, so leave them on the sheet for about two minutes before moving them to wire racks to cool all the way. Ours kept well in a sealed container for the two days it took us to eat them all.

Crunchy Seed Cookies

Spring, you devious bastard. First you’re gettin’ weirdly toasty and inviting ice cream sandwiches and porch-sitting, and now you’re all snowin’ on us again; a retreat indoors feels totally unnatural this time of year. So, Bobbie and I rode bikes home in the spittle-snow last Saturday after an evening spent eating dinner with best friends and then dancing artfully inside a ring of non–best friends wearing togas. Super food and slippery floors made it an evening impervious to dumb ol’ snow, but my nerves are starting to rankle anyway.

The flipside, at least, is that indoor activities translates to lots of kitchen time, and last weekend’s windy, wet jerkdom prompted an all-day baking session that led to these—possibly the most adorable cookies known to humankind. If anime could bake itself into a pastry, it might come out looking like these li’l baby butter cookies covered in seeds (on both sides!). They are also super tasty and addictive, and I whole-heartedly recommend them no matter what the weather outside your window portends, which, for me, is a snow-wet weekend filled with yard sales, karaoke, beer, crafts, and clothing swappin’. Take that, fake spring.

Crunchy Seed Cookies

Adapted from Alice Medrich, Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy

This recipe makes about 60 li'l cookies. They are really the most adorable cookies of all time. And even though I'm wary of fennel, I loved it here and will certainly use it every time. I'm planning to add poppy and sunflower seeds next time though, maybe in place of the white sesames. Customizing is love.

2 teaspoons black sesame seeds

2 teaspoons white sesame seeds

2 teaspoons flax seeds

2 teaspoons fennel seeds (I used 1 1/2)

1/4 cup coarse raw sugar

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, very soft

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

2 tablespoons bourbon (I used brandy)

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large shallow bowl or plate, mix seeds and coarse sugar and set aside. In a different medium bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt, and mix together thoroughly with a fork.

2.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter and granulated sugar. With a large spoon or electric mixer on medium-low, mix the butter and sugar until smooth and well-blended, but not fluffy. Add the egg and bourbon/brandy and mix until smooth. Add the flour mixture, half at a time, and mix by hand until completely incorporated.

3. Roll heaping teaspoons of dough into one-inch balls. Press each ball into the seed mixture on both sides (genius!), flattening the ball to a half-inch thick round. Place the cookies two whole inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets, and bake for 14 to 16 minutes until cookies are slightly browned on the edges, rotating pans halfway through. Set the liners on racks to cool. Medrich says cookies will keep for up to two weeks in an airtight container, but we ate them all in three days.