For the love of spring and lemons
One of the things on my to-do list for my vacation was to do some baking. I rarely seem to find time to experiment in the kitchen these days. It seems that I didn’t really find the time over my break either. I just wasn’t feeling inspired to cook, instead I spent the week either crafting or being lazy.
Last night/this morning at 3 a.m., I woke up with an urge to create something yummy. My brain wouldn’t shut up and let me go back to sleep. 3 a.m. is not a good time for baking though, I’m likely to fall asleep and burn whatever I’m cooking. However, I perused TasteSpotting for a bit and kept coming back to one picture.
This morning, when I woke up again, I was still determined to give it a shot. Hungry Girl’s Lemon Cream and Cheesecake Pots was haunting me. Lemon cream looked like a lot of work, but I was willing to try it once.
If you are afraid of the fat grams, don’t look at the recipe.
I had a bit of trouble with the Lemon Cream. I put a glass bowl over a simmering pot of water and stirred my mixture. However, the temperature seemed to do the Macarena on me. It would go up and then back down. I spent over a half hour stirring it and it just would not come up to 180F. I finally gave up and moved it to a saucepan over low heat and stirred it constantly and didn’t look away for a second. That did the trick, it hit temperature within another 2 minutes. I finished off the lemon cream and moved it to the fridge. A spoonful of this is tart-ally awesome. Think the initial taste of a Lemonhead candy.
I followed her recipe for the Cheesecake pots and split them between 3 ramekins for baking. There would be 3 of us for dinner.
At serving time, I spooned a couple of dollops of the lemon cream on each cheesecake and spread it around.
It’s a bit tough to differentiate the layers in this picture.
However, I think this next picture will explain our opinions on the dessert.
My final thoughts are this: yes, lemon cream is fiddly, but it’s worth the effort. Also, I can totally see this cheesecake becoming a favorite – it was quite simple and not terribly sweet and made just enough for dessert for 3-4 (I could have easily stretched it to 4 ramekins if a fourth person were coming over) with no leftovers. However, I still have half a bowl of lemon cream, so I’ll either be making cheesecakes again this week or else smearing lemon cream on everything.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
i’m glad it came out! the lemon cream can be a bit of work, but you obviously rocked it…well done! and, of course, thank you!