Fourth of July and Key Lime Pie

    Sorry for the mini-hiatus! My last few weeks have been insane… I spent the end of May and beginning of June in Boston. Then, less than a week after that I went on a two-week long road trip that started in Pennsylvania and ended back here in Florida (which included a stop at the newly-opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure… I am a huge Harry Potter nerd, and seriously that place is amazing. I would live there if I could). Despite some major bumps along the way, all of which just HAD to happen on the same day-—like having the airport lose my luggage, getting pulled over repeatedly by police thinking we were doing illegal things (apparently we looked like hoodlums but we were really just lost, I swear!), and losing the keys to our van-—I had a blast. One major thing I missed, though, was being able to cook or bake. Within the first two hours of being home I had already baked a pie, and since then I’ve pretty much been baking and cooking nonstop.



    I’ve been excited for the Fourth of July for a while. The second my older sister told me that she wanted to have a party, I scoured the internet for ideas on what to make until I finally settled on a Key Lime pie. If there’s one good thing about living in Florida, it’s the availability of key limes. I’ve been seeing them for weeks now in all of my local grocery stores, and since I’ve never tasted a single key lime pie before, I was eager to bake one. It took about 21 limes to get the full half cup of juice needed for the pie. I hand-juiced all the limes and by the end of it, I was pretty sure my thumbs were going to fall off. The pie turned out to be pretty good and my parents really liked it, especially when served with fresh, homemade whipped cream. I would definitely make it again. Sorry about the lack of a good photograph-—when the pie had finished baking I put it in the fridge to set, but once the morning rolled around, it had already been cut into and demolished.
    In addition to the Key Lime pie, I wanted to make something patriotic, and what better to make then red and blue cupcakes with vanilla frosting? The cupcakes were sooo good, even though I over-mixed them when trying to get the shades of red and blue just right. A few weeks ago, I posted about finally having a good go-to cupcake recipe. Since then, I’ve found an even better recipe—one that is now my go-to. You can (and should!) check out the recipe for those here. Once the last of the flour was barely mixed into the cupcake batter, I divided the mix in half and added red and blue Wilton gel colors until I achieved a good shade. I layered the colored batter into the tins, and topped them with a simple vanilla frosting. I halved the recipe and made about 32 mini cupcakes, and all of them were gone in less than 24 hours. Seriously, they were that cute and addicting.



Key Lime Pie
Adapted from these two recipes

Ingredients:
1 ¼ cups graham cracker crumbs
5 tbsp butter, melted
4 large egg yolks
14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1 tbs grated key lime zest
1/2 cup fresh key lime juice

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
2. Crust: place the graham cracker crumbs in a bowl and add the melted butter. Mix to combine, then press the crumbs evenly over the bottom of a 9 inch pie pan. Bake for 8 minutes and let cool.
3. Filling: mix together sweetened condensed milk and egg yolks with a whisk until combined. Add in lime juice and zest and whisk again until thoroughly combined. Pour filling mixture into cooled crust. Bake on a rack in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes. Cool pie on a wire rack and then chill for at least 6-8 hours or overnight. Serve with homemade whipped cream.

Lemon Ricotta Cookies

     When I first told my sister that I wanted to make these lemon ricotta cookies, she made it pretty clear that she refused to eat anything with the word “ricotta” in the title, and my mother and other sister had similar reactions. I’m not sure what caused their aversion to it, but these cookies looked too delicious not to make. I ignored their hesitation and decided to make them anyway... And we were all glad I did. In fact, I think the three of them actually ended up eating even more cookies than me. So good! On their own, these cookies are good but nothing spectacular. When the tangy lemon glaze is spread onto them, however, they become ridiculously addictive. I dare you to try and eat just one.



Lemon Ricotta Cookies
Adapted from Fleur D’Elise
Ingredients:

Cookies:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 (15-ounce) container whole milk ricotta cheese (shhh, I used part-skim ricotta)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 lemon, zested

Glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
4 tablespoons lemon juice
1 lemon, zested

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Cookies: In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine the butter and the sugar.
3. Using an electric mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating until incorporated. Add the ricotta cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Beat to combine. Stir in the dry ingredients.
4. Grease baking sheets. Spoon the dough (about 2 tablespoons for each cookie) onto the baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, until slightly golden at the edges (I over-baked my first batch and had to throw them away, so watch carefully). Remove from the oven and let sit on baking sheets 5 min. before transferring them to a cooling rack.
5. Glaze: Combine the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest in a small bowl and stir until smooth. Gently spread a thin layer of glaze onto each cookie, and let harden.

Blueberry Boy-Bait

     Blueberries have never really thrilled me. I tolerate them, yes, but they are not generally at the top of my mind when I want to bake (or eat) anything fruit-based. I found the recipe for this cake a while back, got bored, and decided to bake it one night on a whim. For one thing, it’s called Blueberry Boy-Bait, and I think right there it just screams, “bake me!” The cake itself is fantastic, like a wonderfully moist coffee cake, and the blueberries baked into the top add a tasty punch of sweet to the cake. I have made this recipe twice so far and both times it has been devoured within two days. If I had any boys to bake this cake for, they’d surely be in trouble.



Blueberry Boy-Bait
Adapted from Christopher Kimball’s The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook, as posted on Barefoot Kitchen Witch
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 ¼ cups sugar
10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) cold butter
½ tsp cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 ½ cups fresh blueberries, washed, drained, and blotted with paper towels (or frozen blueberries that have been thoroughly thawed and drained)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 9-inch pan with butter and then flour it lightly. Sift together the flour and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Cut the butter into pieces, then work into the flour mixture using your fingertips or a pastry blender (If you have a food processor, place the flour and sugar in bowl and pulse to mix. Add the butter, which should be cold and cut into pieces, and pulse 7 or 8 times until the flour takes on the texture of coarse meal). Reserve ½ cup of this mixture to use as a topping, and add ½ tsp cinnamon, if desired.
2. Add the baking powder, the salt, the egg yolks (reserve the whites), and the milk to the flour mixture still in the bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed for about 3 minutes (this can also be done by hand with a wooden spoon.)
3. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until they hold 2-inch peaks. Fold gently into the batter, and spread batter in the prepared pan. Sprinkle blueberries on top of the batter (make sure they are dry), and then sprinkle with reserved ½ cup crumb mixture.
4. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until the center of the cake bounces back when pressed with the flat side of a fork. Let cool for 30 minutes before serving.