Tuesday, April 17, 2012

TWD- Lemon Loaf Cake

Before I spent the 11 bucks on a microplane lemon zester, this was the kind of recipe I would have loathed.  I used to hate zesting lemons and this recipe with the zest of 3 large lemons would have killed me without my zester wizard.  If you don't have one of these, run, don't walk, to get one.  You will take on recipes with lemon zest with a smile.

This recipe was easy and straight forward, but I did have some baking issues.  I made a bonehead move of not lowering the temp on my oven to 325 since I was using a dark pan. As a result, the outsides baked faster than the inside and I had to bake the cake 70 minutes to get the cake done on the inside.  This of course resulted in a somewhat dry cake.  But that hasn't stopped me from eating it.  Since I had 1/2 cup of cream leftover, I used it to make the ice cream from BWJ on page 411 (minus the cinnamon).  That was very tasty.


I forgot to bring my eggs to room temp - so I put them in a glass of lukewarm water for a quick solution. Notice my hero - the microplane lemon zester!


Out of the oven!


With some homemade ice cream. That helped to moisten my dry cake.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

TWD - Pizza Rustica

When I saw the names of the April recipes posted on the TWD blog, I was excited about Pizza Rustica, mainly because it meant one less dinner to plan for the week. I think that is one of a mother's greatest challenges - coming up with different dinner ideas that kids like. So I was a tad disappointed when I pulled out my BWJ cookbook to find that this did not appear to be a kid friendly recipe. My husband and I liked this; it was nice with a green salad and a glass of wine, similar to having quiche for dinner. My son took one bite and then headed to the freezer to see what frozen food he could have instead (taquitos). My 9 year old daughter was a good sport about it and ate half a slice.

Overall I give this recipe a thumbs up. It was easy to put together and the dough was easy to manage. I like to make crock pot spinach lasagna and always end up with half a container of ricotta; so I could see myself making this again in a 6 inch pan and halving all the ingredients. That would be the perfect size for my husband and me, while the kids forage for more frozen food.

Weighing the dough so I can split it 2/3 and 1/3.

the pizza rustica before it goes in the oven - notice the emphasis on "rustic" in the rustica, not my best lattice work
Out of the oven - I baked mine for 45 min

Ready to eat!
BTW, Mom made the lovely placemants!