Three sweet ways with lemon

It time to link up with the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop again, and this month’s theme is Lemons (hosted by Delicieux)… They’re sour, and sometimes sweet and smell amazing. Totally versatile, and I love them. This one had me so excited. I tossed ideas back and forwards, and then happened upon a blog called Baking Bites, and saw a blog post on Mini Lemon Donut Muffins with Lemon Curd. I had to try them. I also had my recipe to try for the blog hop. Hello! Two favourite things together. Genius!

Miss Mixotrophy is also back with us again this month, spreading the Thermomix love, so we have a Thermomix recipe to try out as well. She’s has decided to make yummy Lemon Macarons, I have just devoured one, and well, all I can say is deeelicious!

Lemon Curd features in both of our sweet lemon treats, so that is the third lemon treat for you. Great in these recipes, or just spread on toast in the morning. Yum! Let’s get citrussy. Its a long post today, but bear with us, its totally droolworthy and worth it…

Lemon Curd Donut Muffins - recipe from Baking Bites

• 1 1/2 cups plain flour
• 2 tsp baking power
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 tsp lemon zest
• 3/4 cup buttermilk

Also

• 2 tbsp butter, melted, for dipping
• 1/2 cup sugar, for rolling
• 2/3 cup lemon curd (pref. homemade – see recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Lightly grease a mini muffin tin (I used regular sized muffin trays, which made 10 muffins) with cooking spray or vegetable oil.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color. Beat in vegetable oil, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Gradually add in flour mixture in two or three additions, alternating with additions of buttermilk.

Divide batter evenly into prepared mini muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full (approx 1 tbsp batter). Bake for 9-11 minutes (or 15-18 minutes for regular sized muffins) until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Place melted butter in a small bowl. Place sugar for rolling in a small bowl or deep-sided plate. Remove donuts from pan, dip the tops in melted butter and roll in sugar (naughty me dipped the whole muffins!) Place on a cooling rack to allow sugar to set.

When donuts are cooled, fit a pastry bag or ziploc bag with small round pastry tip. Place lemon curd into pastry bag. Poke a small hole in the side of each donut with the pastry tip and pipe a small amount of curd into the center of each donut (approx 1 tsp).

Lemon Curd (Makes 1.5 cups) recipe from Taste

• 2 eggs, plus 2 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup (165g) caster sugar
• 1/3 cup (80g) chilled unsalted butter
• Zest and juice of 2 lemons

Whisk whole eggs, yolks and sugar in a saucepan until smooth, then place pan over a low heat.

Add the butter, juice and zest and whisk continuously until thickened. Strain through a sieve into a sterilised jar.

Lemon curd keeps, covered, in the fridge for 2 weeks (except around me)…

And now, over to Mixotrophy…

Anyone who has ever dabbled in the art of ‘macronage’ has undoubtedly had a few failed attempts along the way… but macarons have that irresistible charm so despite my first attempt resulting in chocolate macarons that were definitely not as pretty as the picture I thought that it would be a good idea to make lemon macarons for this month’s blog hop…

So, armed with a recipe with lots of pretty pictures, Thermie and I headed over to Mel’s place for a lemon baking day. Unfortunately my macarons were an epic failure and I went home most disheartened with my tail between my legs.

This is not a macaron

But persevere I did and after reading this fantastic post by Stella from BraveTart on macaron myths (actually, I think I read her whole website), I was ready to try again. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and after reading Stella’s macaron recipe I can confidently say that I over mixed the batter in both of my first two attempts – the second time disastrously so!

So, I threw the Italian meringue out the window (very nearly literally) and chose a completely different shell recipe, already written for Thermomix… Mara and Helene, you are life savers! Even though the Italian meringue method is touted by José Maréchal in his book Secrets of Macarons as being more robust than the French meringue method, I was willing to give the French a run for their money! I don’t think my final product would win any awards, but I was most pleased with the results.

Who needs a piping bag? Stuff a freezer bag into a cup, fill with batter and then snip the corner off.

Piped batter ready to go. Possibly a little under-mixed but I was erring on the side of caution this time.

Look at those pretty feet

My lemon macarons 'looking like the picture' (almost).

To fill the shells I used the white chocolate and lemon cream from the original lemon macaron recipe out of Secret of Macarons. Here’s my Thermomix conversion:

White chocolate and lemon cream filling

• 125g white sugar
• 200ml lemon juice
• 3 eggs
• 6 egg yolks
• 75g caster sugar
• 110g butter, cubed

Roughly chop white chocolate for a few seconds on speed 6-7. Set aside.

Heat lemon juice at 90˚C for 2-3 minutes and set aside (or set the whole bowl aside if you have two TM bowls).

Add eggs, egg yolks and caster sugar to a clean TM bowl. Heat at 80 ˚C for 4-6 minutes on speed 2-3. After a few seconds pour lemon juice in slowly through hole in the lid with the blades still turning. Reduce speed to speed 1-2 for the remainder of the cooking time and stop cooking when the mixture has thickened.

With the blades turning at speed 1-2, add the butter and white chocolate through the hole in the lid and keep stirring until smooth.

This recipe makes lots of lemon curd! You could probably halve the mixture and still have left overs… or just make double the macaron batter.

Printable template for piping macarons (I know, how cool is that!).

Don’t forget to head across to Delicieux to check out all the other delicious blog hop entries…