Lemon Love

I do my best to send my friends baked goods for their birthdays. Sometimes the recipe hunting, ingredient gathering, baking, wrapping, and packaging doesn’t fit into my schedule and I just can’t do it, but most of the time I make it happen. Not always an easy task, because I’m kind of fanatic about mailing (via USPS Priority) in time for the cakes to arrive on my friends’ birthdays. That part is hard, because the USPS doesn’t always cooperate. This week I sent lemon cakes to Denver and to Yakima, Washington.

The recipe comes from Marcy Goldman’s The Best of Better Baking.com, probably in my top five most-used cookbooks. Through Marcy I discovered Boyajian pure citrus oils. Love them.


I also love my kitchen gadgets. The lemon zester in particular, because it makes delicate lemon ribbons.


I use the same two pans for my birthday cakes. I got them at Goodwill for just a couple bucks apiece, and they’ve probably gotten the most use of any of the pans I own. They remind me of enormous pieces of See’s candy, particularly when I bake chocolate cake in them and add chocolate sprinkles. They also fit perfectly in the 6x6x6 boxes I buy by the half dozen at Paper Zone, and they're the perfect size in that I can usually get two cakes from one recipe.

But I’m talking about lemon today…


...and I’m happy to report that my cakes of lemon love arrived in a timely fashion. Happy Birthday to Dustin and Judy. <3

Hunting for Reasons

Oftentimes my photographic scavenger hunts lead to baking projects. Maybe more accurately, I use the scavenger hunts as an excuse to bake.

Hunt item #5: cassava

cas⋅sa⋅va [kuh-sah-vuh] n. In both senses also called manioc, yuca.

1. A shrubby tropical American plant (Manihot esculenta) widely grown for its large, tuberous, starchy roots.


Hmm. Not that interesting. But wait...

2. The root of this plant, eaten as a staple food in the tropics only after leaching and drying to remove cyanide. Cassava starch is also the source of tapioca.

Bingo.

I remember eating tapioca as a kid, but not so much as an adult. No particular reason, except maybe because my ex used to fish a lot and would cure his own fish roe for bait. It always sort of reminded me of red tapioca.

So I bought a box and considered my options.


Not bad. I bought new place mats a few weeks ago and realized with this project that they’ll come in handy more for photo ops than anything else.

Yesterday I decided to actually make a batch of tapioca. In my effort to eat somewhat healthy, I used egg whites instead whole eggs, skim milk instead of whole milk, and Splenda instead of sugar. (And lots of vanilla.)


It seemed to take longer to thicken than the 20 minutes indicated on the box, but eventually I took it off the burner and set it out to cool. A few hours later after I got off work, I enjoyed a nice bowl of tapioca. With my favorite spoon.


(But see what I mean about its resemblance to roe?)

Hunt item #8: bun in the oven. Stay tuned.