Sourdough lemon cake

Sourdough for breads, yes, of course... 

but how about sourdough for cakes?

Yes! Totally possible and rather nice!

Ingredients:

Flour 100g

Starter 60g

Egg 1

Sugar 30g

Butter (melted) 30g

Honey 1tbsp

Lemon 1

Because the natural yeast in the sourdough starter is used as the rising agent, making cakes with sourdough starter takes much longer time than without. It took me about 4 hours before I put my cake in the oven. Yes I know, it's bit long but don't rush, the key to success is 'patience'.

And when you see the nicely risen fluffy cake, you know it was worth for all that waiting time... ;D

I tried using as little sugar as possible with this recipe without making it a lemon tasting bread-like thing (it's still called 'cake' so got to have some level of sweetness, right?). If you like your cake to be sweeter, add a few more tablespoons of sugar. ;)

Hope you all enjoy 'something-a-bit-different' cake with sourdough. :-d

Earl grey sourdough cube loaf

I believe that the more you use (feed, refresh, whatever you want to call it) the sourdough starter, the better they get. So, based on this, I'm currently using my still-very-new Lemon Yeast more often than my other starters.

Mr Lemon has quite a strong lemon smell, which gave me an idea for this particular loaf, Earl grey tea loaf. Yes, lemon tea, indeed! ;D I used earl grey tea as a liquid (The tea was very strongly brewed, and cooled down beforehand).

Earl grey and lemon worked well together. The tea gave the loaf nice caramel colour and the bread had quite a distinctive fruity aromatic flavour.

Along with the regular size cube loaf, I made some small ones. I bought some small cube tins back in Japan, and I absolutely love them! They are the cutest mini loaves. :D

Loaf for one? ;)

With the Lemon and Coconut curd..., it went down beautifully too...

(The lemon and coconut filling from the croissants.)

Croissants with Lemon Yeast

My new Lemon Yeast is doing pretty well, and the sweet smell of the starter inspired me to make some pastry stuff with it such as...,Croissants, yay!

The recipe is the same as Croissant - Strawberry Yeast -.

Although the lemon starter has a quite strong lemony smell that carried on to the dough, I didn't really taste the lemon when the bread is baked.

This time, I made three different types of croissants.

Plain...

Almond... (filling recipe below.)

Lemon and coconut... (filling recipe below.)

Almond filling -

Ingredients:

Almond powder 50g

Sugar 40g

Butter 40g

Egg 30g

• Cream all the ingredients and chill in the fridge. 

Lemon & Coconut filling -

Ingredients:

Fresh lemon juice 100ml

*Sugar 50-100 g

Egg 2

Coconut butter 75g

Lemon zest 1/2 tsp

(*50g make it very lemony and sharp. Adjust the amount according to your desired sweetness.)

• Mix all the ingredients together in a heat proof bowl, and Bain Marie until the mixture thickens. Sieve the mixture for a smooth texture.

I made these croissants a day before the Race for Life 10km run so that I could treat myself after my race. And yes, I did... I had four of them afterwards! The flaky buttery pastry was the best cure for my empty and exhausted stomach...:D

Andy made me omelet to make a croissant sandwich.

Seriously..., the Croissant sandwich...

If I didn't care about my figure, I would choose croissants as my sandwich bread all the time...;d

Gluten-free Coconut Lemon Tart

Coconut is one of the great alternatives to flour when it comes to gluten-free baking. I use just the coconut flour as a substitute of flour for my Coconut Swiss Roll, which works very well. However, for tarts or cakes that requires more height, you do need some more fine flour substitutes such as gluten-free plain flour or rice flour.

With this coconut tart, I used gluten-free plain flour, same as my Gluten-free Bakewell tart, but replaced some flour with the coconut flour and I also used coconut flour in the filling. When the tart was in the oven, the kitchen was filled with the smell of beautiful coconut and refreshing lemon... I couldn't wait to taste it!

Ingredients:
Pastry

Gluten-free plain flour 200g

Coconut flour 50g

Butter 100g

Sugar 100g

Egg 1

----

Lemon filling

Lemon 2 (juice and zest)

Sugar 150g

Egg 1

Butter (melted) 85g

Coconut flour 30g

1. Prepare the pastry. (follow the Sweet pastry recipe).

2. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Blind bake the pastry for 10 minutes.

3. Make the filling. Combine all the ingredients together, and mix well.

4. Pour the filling in the blind baked tart. Bake 35 minutes. (If the top of the tart start to brown, cover with foil.)

5. Chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

The crusty coconut pastry is a perfect match with the sweet lemony filling... ;D

More tart?

• Lemon Meringue Tart
• Nut About Nut Tart
• Chestnut Tart
• Pumpkin Tart
• Apple Almond Cheese Tartlet
• Glten-free Bakewell tart
• Plum tart

Lemon meringue tart

Tart is one of my favourite cakes to make, and of course to eat:)

For the party we had a few weekends ago, I made this lemon meringue tart. Once the tart case is ready, this classic lemon tart is very easy to make. I made the tart myself (since that's the bit I like the most about tart making;D), but ready-to-roll sweet shortcrust pastry will do the job.

The fresh and tangy lemon filling, and crunchy outside, chewy inside meringue on the crispy golden pastry.... It was simply unbeatable... sooooo good... 

This time I made it in a 9 inch tart tin but I've decided that I'll use little tartlet tins next time so that I don't accidentally eat too much... (I must have had quarter of the big tart...ooops...)

Here is how to make this all time classic ;)

Ingredients:

Sweet pastry

Flour 250g

Sugar 125g

Butter (cold diced) 125g

Egg 1

Salt pinch

Lemon filling

Fresh lemon juice 150ml

Lemon zest 1 tsp

Sugar 100g

Double cream 60ml

Egg 3

Egg yolk 4

Meringue

Egg white 4

Sugar 200g

1. Make the sweet pastry. Mix sugar, salt and egg in a bowl.

2. Sift flour into 2 and stir until the mixture becomes sandy.

3. Add butter into 2. "Cut in" the butter by using a dough scraper.

4. When the mixture has combined, take the dough out on a floured surface and knead lightly until it becomes smooth pastry. Cover  and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

5. Roll out the pastry on a floured surface to 5mm thickness. Line the pastry on a buttered and floured tart tin. Chill in the freezer for 30 minutes.

6. Preheat the oven to 190º. Line the pastry with baking sheet and fill with uncooked rice. Bake for 10 minutes and remove the baking sheet and rice and put the pastry back in the oven for 15 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.

7. Prepare the filling. Combine lemon juice, lemon zest and sugar and mix well.

8. Add cream into 7 and mix well.

9. Beat eggs and egg yolks into 8 one at a time.

10. Pour the filling into the tart case. Bake for 15 minutes until the filling is set. Let it cool.

11. Make the meringue. Beat the egg white and sugar together in an electric mixer until it forms stiff peaks. Pipe the meringue on the tart.

12. Put the tart in the oven (120ºc) to colour the meringue.

Non butter cream cake

I love it when I imagine a new recipe in my head then actually try it, and it works! (Well, it's not always the case though... there have been disasters in the kitchen too...)

So, today was one of those experimental days in the kitchen. I had a pot of double cream and egg yolks that were needed to be used. After a bit of calculation about the ingredients in my head (I'm not good at maths and I have what-I-call "animal instinct..." for baking....) I decided to make one of my all time favourite "lemon drizzle cake".

I didn't use butter this time since I thought double cream will give a good amount of fat to the cake. When I mix the all the ingredients, the consistency of the mixture looked promising;)

After about 40 minutes in the oven, the cake came out as well as or even better than I expected! With a drizzle of lemon icing and poppy seeds... It tasted simply awesome. So..., I declare that my experiment was a great success!

Ingredients:

Plain flour 200g

Baking powder 1 tsp

Double cream 250g

Sugar 150g

Egg yolk 2

Egg 1

Lemon juice 3 tbsp

1.Sift flour and baking powder together. Preheat the oven to 180ºc.

2. Combine double cream and sugar in a bowl and mix to just before "soft peaks".

3. Mix in egg yolk, egg and lemon juice to 2.

4. Fold in flour and baking powder.

5. Pour the mixture into a cake tin. Bake in the preheated oven (180ºc) for 40 minutes.

6. When the cake is cooled, decorate with icing and poppy seed.

Lamington

Lalala.. lamingtons...Popular cake in Australia. Aussies even have a day called "National Lamington Day", awesome....

This time I made the sponge and the three types of coating myself (lemon curd, dark chocolate and white chocolate), but if you can't be bothered, then get a ready-made sponge (or you can even use a left-over sponge...) and a jar of lemon curd.

The sweet and sour lemon curd soaked nicely into the sponge, and hint of coconut flavour is ....hummm, yummy...

And of course, it's all about presentation...three lamingtons nicely wrapped in a bag with WOS sticker (oh, YES!), ready to put smile on people's face:D

Homemade Lemon curd

Another thing to try when you have time, Lemon curd.
Freshly made sweet and sour lemon curd is very versatile. It can be used to spread on bread, pour on icecream, add in a muffin, put in a pie... so on and so on...

Thinking of that lemony flavour and taste makes my mouth wet... is that only me...?

Ingredients;

Fresh lemon juice 100ml

Sugar 120 g

Egg 2

Butter 35g

Lemon zest 1/2 tsp

1. Melt butter in a microwave.

2. In a pan, combine all the ingredients and mix well.

3. Place the pan on a low heat.

4. Simmer until it thickens (Be careful not to burn.)