Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

HOLY COW and then some! Who knew you were all out there…obviously not me. Thanks to all the lurkers who stepped up and posted. I must admit that a small sense of panic filled me. My delusion of 35 readers is now gone and I felt a little pressure to bake. I feel bad that they are just cookies but I didn’t want to mess up the kitchen that much after I had turbo cleaned it(though my mom still did clean some of it when she got here…sigh).
I love, love, love the flavor of key lime. I mean, love(I might have mentioned that). Now if you don’t have access to key limes other limes will do but I will step up and be honest and say it is not the same. Key limes are much more tart and for such a little fruit it has quite a bit of flavor. Not readily available all that much, but lucky for me they bottle it…and my local high end store carries it. It’s called Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key Lime juice and if you don’t have a store around you that carries it, like most things in life, it can be found on Amazon.com. These cookies combine a lot of things I enjoy: key lime, sugar cookies, butter cream and jam. I would have really liked to have key limes so that I could have used the zest in the sugar cookie, but alas that was not going to happen. You can make your butter cream as tart as you would like, I like mine so tart that my cheeks start to pucker and I make a face that hopefully will never be photographed! The raspberry jam is good but not necessary…it was really only added for color because the bland slightly pale green was just not working for me. Be warned, you will be seeing more key lime in the near future…I’m sure in cheesecake form and maybe in another.
The parental unit has officially arrived and my mom was quite amazed at all the “computer food people” who were reading my site…especially the ones who said where they were from. For those of you celebrating the Easter holiday, I wish you a happy one…for everyone else I say have a happy Sunday.

Key Lime Sandwich Coolers

¾ cup powdered sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 egg
1 tsp key lime zest(or if you like me and had none 2 TBSP key lime juice)
2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tarter

Mix sugars, butter, egg and zest until creamy.
Mix in flour, baking soda and cream of tarter.
Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Remove from fridge and divide in half.
Roll each half to ¼ inch thick on lightly floured surface. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out as many circles as you can. Taking a smaller round cookie cutter, cut a hole in the middle of HALF the batch of cookies. Leave the other half whole.
Bake for approximately 7-8 minutes, until light brown around the edges.
Place on baking rack to cool.

Frosting
½ cup butter, room temperature
3 cups powdered sugar
as much key lime juice as you want

Cream butter and sugar together. Get frosting to consistency you want. If it is not thick enough add more sugar. Add key lime juice 1 TBSP at a time and blend. Taste after each incorporation to see if you have reached desired tartness.
Take the whole cookie and frost the entire top. Then place the cookie with the hole in the middle on top of that. If desired you can heat up some seedless raspberry jam and place in the middle.

So my parents come for a quick holiday here on Friday(so I may be MIA for a little bit). My mom, who is technically challenged, always tries to be supportive of my “Internet food stuff” and what not. She asked me a question the other day that I did not know the answer to. She said, “how many people read your Internet food site?” A good question. If she had asked me before I made and posted about Snickerdoodle muffins I would have told her about 35. However, after making those muffins, I got over 30 emails from people I didn’t even recognize(as regular readers of my blog) telling me how much they loved those muffins and how great they turned out(*blush*). So that got me thinking…how many people do read my blog? So if you normally don’t comment, could you today, so I know you are out there. And well, if you usually comment, could you do it again…you know to make me feel good :).
Enough about that. On to food. I have a super sick husband right now. The flu has knocked him upside the head, chewed him up and spit him out…it is not pretty by any means. He hasn’t really been hungry either. So I gave up making food for him and got selfish and made something for me. Wanting to use the last of my almond meal I decided to make cupcakes…almond ones(obviously). I also had the most gorgeous blood oranges that were begging to be used. How can I refuse begging oranges? And with that my Citrus Scented Almond Cupcakes with Blood Orange Icing were born.
There is not going to be much creating in this next week. With the family coming for Easter we will be out a lot. I say this now but knowing me, it will kill me not to have something up on the blog and I will break down and make something…I’m such a slave to this blog :).

Citrus Scented Almond Cupcakes with Blood Orange Icing

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup plus 2 TBSP almond meal
1 ¼  tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/3 cup plus 1 TBSP unsalted butter
½  cup superfine sugar
1 egg
zest of one blood orange
1/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 350F.
Sift together the flour, almond meal, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In an electric mixer with paddle attachment cream together the butter and sugar, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides. Add the egg and mix for one minute. Add the zest and mix until incorporated. Add half of the flour mixture. Add the water. Add the remaining flour mixture. Mix until all is incorporated.
Grease a muffin tin, I used a standard one. Scoop batter into muffin tin(I used a ice cream scoop). I only got 6 cupcakes…which is just perfect for our 2 person family.
Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool before glazing.

Blood Orange Icing

This is not exact and will depend on your own personal taste.

3 TBSP unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ½ cups powdered sugar
zest of one blood orange
1/3 cup blood orange(or any orange family member)

Beat together in an electric mixer with paddle attachment the butter, sugar, and zest. Add juice and mix. This is when I got bad and just kept adding orange juice until it was at the consistency I wanted. You want it to be a glaze more than a frosting.
Once the cupcakes are cool. Dip the top part of the cupcake into the glaze and set aside. Let the icing set up for about 5 minutes and dip them all again for a second coat.

Helen of Tartlette with her Pillow Cheesecake with Salted Butter Caramel Sauce. This was a close one all the way up until the deadline. I want to again thank everyone for all their hard work and for going above and beyond with the entries. And a special thanks to all those who voted…I had many a lurker of this site step up and vote(which was nice!)

Congraulations to Helen. For winning she recieves a copy of I Love Cheesecake by Mary Crownover. If she ever needs anymore cheesecake inspiration, it is in there! In winning, Helen will also be hosting the next round of HHDD…can’t wait to see what she comes up with!