Lorraine Pascale's Blueberry and Limoncello Drizzle Cake

 

I have a great relationship with my personal trainer. She pushes me hard, but not too hard; she's encouraging, we have a good chat while I'm working out and she isn't draconian when it comes to diet. To prove th point, she hinted that since I like baking I could make her a cake for her birthday, which was the day after mine.

She'd told me she liked loaf cakes and I decided I wanted to make something that wasn't too unhealthy, so would involve less sugar than some cakes, not have piles of frosting, and include fruit but have an indulgent quality at the same time - it was her 40th birthday so a special occasion after all.

I turned to Lorraine Pascale's book A Lighter Way to Bake and found a recipe for a blueberry and limoncello drizzle cake, which ticked all those boxes - it wasn't a loaf cake but as it wasn't filled I decided there was no reason why I couldn't bake it in a loaf tin.

The recipe can be found online here; I had some blueberries in the freezer from a previous recipe and since I don't like them this was a good opportunity to use them up; I already had about a quarter of a bottle of limoncello left, I think from the Christmas before last, so the only ingredients I therefore had to buy was a little tub of yogurt and two lemons.

Making the batter

Adding the blueberries

ready to go in the oven

Here's the cake!

about to make the icing

drizzling over the icing

The cake took a bit longer to bake than the time given in the recipe; if you do it in a loaf tin the best thing is to keep testing it with a skewer.

I gave it to my personal trainer the day before her birthday when we had a gym session (actually on my birthday, I'm that dedicated!) and she said afterwards she and her friends really enjoyed it.

This isn't the cheapest recipe to make but for me it was pretty frugal as I was using up blueberries and limoncello I already had, which is quite a thrifty approach, so I'm sending this to Credit Crunch Munch. This month the challenge is hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy and was devised by Helen and Camilla.

Limoncello Cupcakes

 

 

I was given some limoncello for Christmas; I like drinking it but also baking with the liqueur which I've done before when I made these cookies and macarons. What I haven't made yet is limoncello cupcakes - until now!

 

Recently we had some last-minute visitors who came round to see our new house. About 40 minutes before they arrived, I thought it was a shame I didn't have any cake to offer them and wondered if I could whip up a small batch of cakes in just over half an hour. It turns out you can, but only just!

 

I used a recipe from a book called Make Bake Cupcake, which has some really inventive cupcake recipes. As usual, I changed the recipe a bit. Here's what I did to make six cupcakes:

 

You need:

90g self-raising flour

60g butter, softened

100g caster sugar

1 egg

3 tbsp. milk

3 tbsp. limoncello

for the frosting:

1 egg white

75g granulated sugar

2 tbsp. limoncello

100g icing sugar

100g butter, softened

 

Preheat oven to 180C and line a 6-hole muffin tin with cake cases. I used yellow to go with the lemon flavour.

 

Cream the butter and the sugar then add the egg and mix well. Fold in the flour then add the milk and limoncello and beat well.

 

Spoon the mixture into the cake cases and bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool afterwards.

The recipe for the frosting didn't quite work for me so I ended up adding a lot of icing sugar though I wasn't supposed to. This isn't a buttercream exactly -even with the icing sugar it has a slightly different consistency and tasted really good.

Put the egg white and sugar in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water and whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and whisk for five minutes. Add the butter and whisk until you have soft peaks. Add the limoncello then add as much icing sugar as you need to make it a spreadable consistency so it isn't too runny.

Swirl the icing onto the cupcakes. It was at this exact moment that our visitors arrived so I quickly slapped some icing on each cake with a spoon and didn't have time to make them look pretty! They did taste good though.

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is L.

 

Glazed Limoncello Cookies

This was another edible gift I made this Christmas. I used this recipe that I found on food.com.

You need:
170g butter
3/4 cup icing sugar
1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tbsp lemon zest
2 tbsp limoncello
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp granulated sugar

for the glaze:
1/4 cup icing sugar
2 tsp limoncello
gold dusting powder (optional)

Cream the butter and icing sugar together.

Add the flour, lemon zest, limoncello and salt, and mix to form a dough.

I decided to try out a cookie press I had bought recently in Lidl. It looks a bit like a gun - you put the dough inside, choose which nozzle or cookie cutter shape you want to use and screw it into the end, and as you press the handle of the gun, the dough is pushed through and comes out in the shape you have chosen.

It started out quite well and was easy to use, and the first few cookies came out perfectly:

I'd only done three when the cookie press broke! The handles made a strange noise and a little piece of plastic flew out, and after that every time I pressed the handle it wouldn't push the dough through and so nothing was coming out. I tried a few times but had to give up and concede that the thing was actually broken, which was very disappointing. I know my dough wasn't too stiff and I was using the equipment correctly, so I can only conclude that it was cheaply made and of poor quality.

So it was back to the standard cookie cutter - and I realised that the only vaguely Christmas-related cookie cutter I possess is a holly leaf. I really need to get some more!

Preheat oven to about 180C and bake for 20 minutes. Leave to cool.

To make the glaze, mix the icing sugar and limoncello and drizzle over the top of the cookies. I also sprinkled some gold lustre powder over the top before the icing was set.

I am sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked, as their theme this month is citrus fruits. This recipe has lemon zest and limoncello.

L is for...Limoncello macarons

I wanted to try making macarons again after recently taking a class at Caroline's Tea and Scones and came across a recipe for some using a lemon liqueur, so decided they would fit the Alphabakes theme for February as well. I had a feeling they wouldn't turn out as well as the macarons I made in the class, but I was hopeful!

The recipe was from a book called "Biscuits and macaroons" from Marks & Spencer. It was a different recipe to the one Caroline gave us in her class, but as I wanted to add the limoncello I decided to follow this one from the book.

Ingredients:

3 egg whites

55g caster sugar

yellow food colouring

200g icing sugar

120g ground almonds

2 tsp finely grated lemon rind

60ml single cream

150g white chocolate

4 tsp limoncello lemon liqueur

The recipe didn't say to age the egg whites, but following Caroline's advice in the class I took, I cracked them the day before. So to begin, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

Add the sugar

Add a few drops of yellow food colouring and beat

Add the ground almonds and icing sugar

This is my silicon macaron mat that I bought over the internet. It is flat and the circle shapes are only slightly raised, so it is as if you are piping onto a baking sheet but with a guide and a slight edge that will help keep the macarons the same size and shape. It's also easy to remove the macarons afterwards as the mat is flexible so you simply peel it off.

I'm not sure why this picture came out sideways as I did try to rotate it. Here's a trick I learnt from Caroline, and I can't believe I never knew about it before! When you're filling a piping bag - I always use disposable ones these days - stand it in a glass (this is a pint glass) and fold the excess bag down over the top. You can fill the bag without needing to hold it or get messy, and when you're done, simply fold the rest of the bag up and remove from the glass.

Piping onto my macaron mat - it really does work! It's important to leave the macarons to stand for at least half an hour, so they form a slight skin on the top. Meanwhile preheat oven to 150 C. Bake for 20 mins.

Unfortunately the macarons spread a little and became attached to each other, though they were fairly easy to separate from each other....

... unfortunately, they weren't so easy to get off the macaron mat in one piece! Some of them were a bit stuck on and left half of the macaron behind when I took them off. I don't know if they weren't quite cooked enough, or if I should have greased the macaron mat, or if I was just too heavy-handed when I took the first few off, as they came off fine after that. So I only had about half as many macarons as I'd expected - at least the ones I did have looked OK if not perfect!

For the filling, I used a bottle of Limoncello I had bought back from Italy and not opened yet. I'd never tried this lemon liqueur before - it's really sweet but has quite a kick!

Bring the cream to the boil, take off the heat and stir in the white chocolate. Add the liqueur and allow to cool until it is thick enough to spread on the macarons.

The finished product

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When I made the macarons in Caroline's class, they had shiny, glossy tops. Mine were a lot more matt, and also they tasted more grainy as if you could taste the ground almonds inside. I don't know whether to put that down to the fact that I used a different recipe or not - next time I will try Caroline's own recipe and see how they turn out.

The macarons tasted more of white chocolate than of lemon in my opinion - next time I would try to adjust the recipe so the lemon flavour comes through more. The filling  was also runnier than I would have liked - it set when it was in the fridge and it was easy enough to fill the macarons, but when they had been out at room temperature for just a couple of hours, the filling went quite runny and started to seep out the sides of the macaron. It wasn't too bad, but I didn't think I could give these away as gifts like I did with the chocolate macarons I made in class.

Overall I wasn't too disappointed with my attempt at macarons, even though they were quite different to the ones I made in Caroline's class. I think next time I will have to try to recreate her recipe and see if I have any more success!

I am entering these into February's Alphabakes challenge - the letter L - hosted by me and Ros from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker.

I'm also updating this to send to Baking with Spirit, hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, as her ingredient this month is Limoncello.

It also happens this month that the Classic French challenge is macarons so this recipe fits the bill for that too (and I'm not going to attempt to make macarons again in a hurry!).  The challenge is hosted by A Kick At The Pantry Door this month on behalf of Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.