Calling All Sourpusses

A while ago when I asked for suggestions on my blog, Rachel suggested that I do some citrus desserts. I LOVE getting suggestions (so please send me more!), and I'm always open to trying something new, so we listened and bought a bunch of lemons! This blog post is meant for sourpusses who like tart desserts, NOT sourpusses who are grumpy!!!!!

For a few of these recipes, we used Meyer lemons. Meyer lemons are actually a cross between a regular lemon and a mandarin orange. They are smaller than regular lemons, with a thinner, brighter skin. They're better for baking than for cooking and we thought that we'd like baking with them more than regular lemons, but actually decided that we preferred the more intense lemony flavor that regular lemons have. However, if you've never used Meyer lemons before, you should give them a try and decide for yourself!

Our first lemon dessert was lemon meringue pie bars. This is an unusual recipe because it uses the WHOLE lemon. Lots of recipes use a combination of lemon zest and lemon juice, but this recipe just had you cut it up and throw the entire lemon in. This method was definitely easier than zesting and juicing a lemon, but we did not like the bitter taste that using the pith (which is the white part of the rind) gave the bars. While the lemon curd layer of this recipe was easy to make, the meringue layer was complicated and involved melting sugar in a double boiler using a candy thermometer and then transitioning to a mixer to make the meringue. I thought it was fun, but my mom thought that it was annoying! Overall we liked these bars well enough, but wouldn't recommend them because of the bitterness.

I loved watching my mom use the kitchen torch to brown the meringue! I'm not allowed to do that part, but I used a spoon to make all of the pretty meringue swirls before she started!

I thought that these bars looked very pretty. They were sticky to eat though!

After that, we decided that we wanted to try lemon meringue bars again, but with a recipe that didn't use the pith. So we made this recipe with a poppy seed crust, and it was excellent! It had a more traditional curd, using lemon juice and lemon zest, but the meringue was much easier to make. The poppy seed crust was delicious and everyone agreed that it added a lot!

The meringue layer on these bars was much thinner, but it was still plenty of meringue. Do you see the poppy seeds?!

Next we tried mini key lime pies. These were a SENSATION!!!!! Everybody who had one freaked out about how good they were!!!! We made sure to use real key lime juice, and I think that made a big difference. We added on candied key lime slices. These didn't dry as well as they should have and my mom thought that they kind of ended up looking like pickles! But I thought that they were tasty and looked cute! I told her not to hurt the key limes' feelings!!!!

I do kind of see her point about looking like pickles...

Our next sourpuss adventure was lemon cheesecake squares. I really liked these and Rachel loved them too. These were less tart than our other lemon desserts because they were more cheesecake than lemon, so they might be good for someone who doesn't love citrus. I liked using the blackberries on top, but you could use any fruit.

I think these would have looked great if we could have added some edible flowers, but we didn't have any!

A very exciting recent family event is that my dad went on his 100th consecutive run! Usually he's traveling all the time, which makes it harder for him to exercise but he has been able to run every day during quarantine! We surprised him with a party when he got home and put up a big congratulations banner and bought him a special running t-shirt. We made my mom's guacamole. It's a secret recipe and it's AMAZING, but it does have lime juice in it, so it kind of fits with our sourpuss post! Last year we had a guacamole contest that we called a guaca-tition. Of course, my mom won! Our friend Alec claims that he won and has some notebook with the scoring, but our friend Sophie switched her vote because she really liked my mom's best. So Alec lost lost lost! But his guacamole was really good too. And so was our friend Steph's, but her version was more fancy and creative. Alec and my mom's were more traditional. Anyway, for my dad's running celebration, we also made a lemon layer cake with lemon cream cheese buttercream. This cake could have gone into our Mistakes and Mishaps post, because it was so fragile that some of the bottom layer broke. But we just added piping around the bottom edge and that looked great! This cake was beyond fantastic and a huge hit!! The cake itself was moist and tender, and the frosting was outstanding!! Rachel gave it five stars!

Isn't the "congratulations" confetti cool?

But our night got a little bit hectic and we didn't actually eat the cake until the next night.

Do you like our modifications?!

Another huge lemon success was our lemon cornmeal cake with lemon glaze and crushed blueberry sauce. This is the cake that we were glazing when we burned our caramel!

I like how the glaze looked dripping down the sides and it added a huge amount of flavor to the cake!

I made the crushed blueberry sauce all by myself. I suggested to my mom that we add lemon juice and lemon zest to the blueberries for the sauce, and it turned out that they were already in the recipe!

This is how it looked when we put it all together with whipped cream and served it.

One of our more interesting lemon baking projects was lemon coconut pull apart bread. The idea is kind of similar to monkey bread, but in this recipe, you pull apart slices instead of balls.

First we rolled out a dough and sprinkled lemon sugar and coconut on top.

Then you cut strips and cut those into squares and stack them up.

Then you line the squares up in your pan. There is a gap at first...

But after the second rise, the pan is full!

This recipe doesn't include a glaze, but we thought that one would be good. So we added this lemon glaze from a different recipe.

Doesn't this look delectable?!

This is what it looks like when you pull it apart.

And this is how we served it.

Our last lemon dessert that was very good was our lemon bars with shortbread crust. These came out amazing in the end, but we had a few problems along the way. They took much longer to set than the recipe said. And also the filling stayed pretty soft and so they were messy to eat. But the filling was just the right amount of tart and the shortbread crust was fantastic. My brother especially loved these.

We topped them with powdered sugar.

We've been baking faster than I can blog, so there's lots more fruit and peanut butter to tell you about soon. And we have more plans with key limes. But in the mean time, I hope that you're inspired to try some of these. Pucker up!!!!!!!