Homemade Candied Lemon Peel

I've been wanting to make candied citrus peel for a while now and I thought making them to decorate my Lemon Posset Shortcakes would be the perfect time.

There are tons of recipes available, but I used this recipe from Use Real Butter because they left the pith on (but I used lemons instead of oranges). The process is very easy...use organic fruit since you're eating the peel, then just wash the peel, separate the peel from the flesh of the fruit, slice the peels into whatever size you like, boil the peels a few times to soften them and get rid of some the bitterness, then boil the peels in a sugar syrup until translucent and let them dry. That is basically it! You can leave them as they are or finish them by rolling them in granulated sugar and/or dipping one end in chocolate.

I think I'll make them for Christmas gifts next year (or maybe candied fruit slices instead) since they are so easy and yummy.

juicing the lemons

now I'll just need to clean these rinds

I poured the extra lemon juice into baggies and froze it for future use

the peels are placed in a pot of cold water and boiled

 this process is repeated three times

making the sugar syrup

all done! My cooking chopsticks worked well for lifting them
out of the sugar water.

letting the finished peels dry

sweet and chewy candied peels

Bye for now...

Rose's Alpha Bakers: Kouign Amann

I'm back for another year of baking with the wonderful Heavenly Cake Bakers. Exciting! This year we are: Rose's Alpha Bakers, and we're baking from another book by the amazing Rose Levy Beranbaum, The Baking Bible. Our first recipe from the book is the buttery, sugary, delicious Kouign Amann.

I've made kouign amann once before, following David Lebovitz's recipe. As much as I love David Lebovitz's recipes and his blog, I enjoyed my second go 'round with kouign amann much more using Rose's recipe. The dough was much easier to handle, I liked the individual sized portions better than one large cake, and the finished cakes were lighter and flakier (although Rose's recipe does call for 4 times the butter of David's, so that would explain the extra flakiness!).

These pastries originated in the Brittany region of France and kouign amann translates to cake (kouign) butter (amann)...and a buttery cake they sure are! Definitely use European cultured butter which has a higher butterfat percentage than American butter, and make the small, individualized sized pastries which will give you more caramelization per bite.

As noted in the cookbook, these pastries take about 6 hours from start to finish, so these are an all-day project. I love making laminated doughs though, so I enjoyed the rolling and making turns. My only complaint is that Rose recommends not letting the dough chill for longer than 2 hours, so - while these pastries seem perfect for breakfast or brunch - there wouldn't be any way to make these to serve in the morning (unless you woke up at 3:00am!). They would, however, be equally good for dessert - and that's how my husband and I enjoyed them, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream - but I would love to serve them fresh from the oven at a brunch party. The pastries were pretty good the next day, warmed briefly in the microwave, but they had lost the caramelized crunch on the bottom of the pastry. The recipe says to store them in paper bags, but I wrapped each one, individually, in wax paper...not only did they stay fresh, they looked like they came straight from a French pâtisserie.

Here are my photos from my first Rose's Alpha Bakers adventure:

a few simple ingredients combine to make a sweet, buttery, flaky creation!

my ball of dough. A very easy dough to work with - not sticky or tough!

my 5" butter square

instead of rolling it, I just pressed and pulled my dough into an 8" square...easy!

the butter square gets outlined...

and then the four corners get rolled into long "tabs" or flaps

the butter square gets placed on the middle "pillow" of dough...

and the four flaps get folded over (just like an envelope) and edges are pinched shut

At this point, you make two "turns" of the dough (folding the dough in thirds and rolling out) which creates a laminated dough (layers of dough and butter). The third turn is rolled out with sugar, instead of flour, which helps to create the sugary, caramelized layers.

about to roll the third turn in sugar

the dough is rolled to an 8x16" rectangle and then cut into eight 4" squares

you can see the layers here

each square is rolled to 6" and then the four corners are folded into the middle

the other four corners are then folded into the middle (over the original four corners)

each bundle is placed into a baking ring and set aside to rise

the baked kouign amann are buttery and caramelized...yum!

crunchy and delicious on the outside...

while still soft and tender on the inside (this was cut into while still warm...I couldn't wait!
So the layers are a little smooshed)

we added a scoop of vanilla ice cream and enjoyed for dessert

here is a picture from the next morning.
You can see the layers more clearly but it doesn't look quite as moist.
Still yummy though, after a quick warming.

Bye for now...

Homemade puff pastry becomes...parmesan twists and palmiers

Using the scraps from my homemade puff pastry recipe I made some parmesan cheese twists and palmiers. I should really write it this way, "palmiers," because I just free-handed the shape as opposed to making them the traditional elephant ear shape. I basically just rolled them into circles and they ended up looking like shrimp because the "tail" separated a little during baking.

For the cheese twists, I simply grated some lovely Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, brushed with egg and then pressed the cheese onto the dough, twisted, and put on the pan.

They were both delicious, buttery little snacks. Here are some photos:

a close up of my parmesan cheese twists

my little palmiers look like shrimp...but taste like sugar!

a little egg wash, some parmigiano-reggiano cheese and these are ready to bake

done! smells so good

check out all of the layers inside

just missing a glass of red wine

so yummy

baking up the curly palmiers

caramelized sugar...what could be better!

choices choices choices...which one to try first?

Bye for now...

A Homemade Christmas 2011, part 4: Aromatherapy Body Butters & Scrubs

This is the final post in my four-part series detailing a Homemade Christmas 2011. As I mentioned in part one of this series (vanilla extract), I decided to give lots of homemade gifts this year and wanted to document all of these different "crafty" projects. Parts two and three detailed my hand-sewn lavender eye pillows and decorated Christmas cookies. This final post covers Aromatherapy Body Butters & Salt/Sugar Scrubs.

I took a class in November on making your own body butters and scrubs and was hooked! I love giving myself facials and slathering on sweet-smelling lotions, creams and scrubs - anything to help me recreate a spa experience at home. So, this class gave me all sorts of warm fuzzies inside and I knew right away that I'd be adding this to my Christmas gift-giving list.

The class I took was just 1-hour so we only had time to learn about creating the scrubs and bodybutter bases; sadly there wasn't very much time to get into the aromatherapy side of things. The teacher did recommend some combinations of essential oils that blended well together, and had a bunch of oils for us to try, but the first thing I felt I had to do was learn more about aromatherapy and combining and blending of essential oils.

I felt like an alchemist, hunched over my table, mixing the different combinations of essential oils with droppers. It was really fun to try recipes I found online and also of my own imagination and then smell them a few days alter to see how they had melded together...or not. I definitely found some scents that did not play nice with each other! I love using different fonts for things so each different "flavor" of butter/scrub got its own cute font that went with the scent and type of cream ("sharper" fonts for citrusy scents vs more flowing, "softer" fonts for more romantic scents such as ylang ylang or bergamot).

I will share the nice recipes I created myself and the ones I used and liked from other websites in a separate post.

Next up: homemade lip balm! I wanted to make these for Christmas but didn't have enough time so this is next on my list. I ordered some lip balm tubes and tins from Mountain Rose Herbs, I've got all the ingredients and a few recipes to try...can't wait.

Links to websites where I got my supplies, recipes and ideas are below.

essential oils and carrier oils

shea butter (on left), oils and salt and sugar for the scrubs

my essential oil mixtures. I gave each a number and kept a spreadsheet
so I could track the ingredients and see which combinations worked and which didn't

the finished butters. The letters on the label corresponds to my scent spreadsheet

the ones in the round jars were whipped longer so they had a really firm texture and were whiter in color

the top two jars here are sugar scrubs with grapeseed oil. This was one of my favorites!

salt scrubs with a citrus scent

spray bottles filled with herbal aftershave and aromatherapy spritzers

I left the letter identification on each jar while adding the final label,
to make sure they all got the correct tag

more finished jars

this is so fun!

finished spritzers and mists

I felt like I was running an old-timey apothecary when I was done

all of the labels included the ingredients and the date made

Sources for butters, carrier oils, essential oils and containers:
Mountain Rose Herbs - a wonderful site for organic essential oils and carrier oils (amongst many other items including lip balm tubes and tins). The customer service was excellent too!
Brambleberry - for shea butter and disposable droppers. They are primarily are a soap-making supplier but have lots of other fun products.
Specialty Bottle - for glass jars and spritzer bottles. A fabulous site with really cheap prices for bottles, jars, and other containers.

Recommended sites for learning about essential oils and aromatherapy, combining different oils and recipes for body butters, scrubs, lip balms and other homemade body products:
Aura Cacia - a great resource for learning the properties of different essential oils, recipes and suggestions on combining essential oils. They also sell many different products (you can find their essential oils in Whole Foods and other health stores).
AromaWeb - a wonderful site to learn about aromatherapy. There are many, many articles to teach you about blending oils and the properties of different oils. Also has lots of links to books and other websites.
eHow -  found some vegan lip balm recipes here.
Make Your Own Cosmetics - a site with user-created recipes for all kinds of creams, butters, scrubs, lip balms and soaps. A really fun place to look around and get ideas.
Mountain Rose Herbs lip balm recipes - in addition to buying oils from this site, I also found an old newsletter detailing several lip balm recipes.


Bye for now...