Reading, Eating and Weeding: 4/4/21

Easter dinner was just the 2 of us today, but I made honey hoisin pork tenderloin, au gratin potatoes, and some roasted asparagus (just a drizzle of lime olive oil, salt and pepper - yum!) and then for dessert...

Recipe 13 - Lemon Sugar Cookie Bars

I love lemon - lemon tarts were one of my favorite indulgences when I was in France during college, particularly those from one tearoom near the chateau in Angers. Traditional custardy lemon bars with a buttery crust from the cafeteria at St. Olaf were worth trying to grab a second or third. And there is something about citrus that says "spring" and "Easter" to me, so for Easter dinner, I told E to check the Pinterest dessert board for something with lemon. This was the winner from The Salty Marshmallow blog - Lemon Sugar Cookie Bars. I think I would call them Creamy Lemon Sugar Cookie Bars, or something like that. It is a sugar cookie base, cream cheese lemon filling and then topped with more crumbles of the cookie dough. I either used too much of the cookie dough for the crust, or didn't let the topping cook long enough to be crunchy, but I think when I make them again, I will make half the dough and skip the crumbles on top. They didn't really add anything for me. Overall a nice easy alternative to the usual lemon bar - I would make it again. Prepare ahead - the crust needs to completely cool before adding the filling and then you will bake again. Also, be careful when eating - the bottom crust gets quite crispy and when I tried to eat mine with a fork like a civilized person, the bar slipped off the plate and landed on the couch (yes, I was being civilized eating on the couch in front of the TV). It was much easier to eat when I just picked it up with my hand.

Crust:

1 C sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 C (2 sticks) butter at room temperature

2 C flour

Filling:

8 oz cream cheese at room temperature

1/4 C lemon juice (for me, juice of one lemon)

2 Tbsp lemon zest divided

1/2 C sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8"x8" or 9"x9" baking pan with foil or parchment and spray liberally with non-stick cooking spray. (There is enough butter in these, you could probably skip this, depending on your pan. The foil did make it easy to just lift out of the pan so I could cut easier, though.)

With stand mixer using paddle attachment, or with hand mixer, beat together the softened butter, sugar, and vanilla on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Set mixer on low and slowly add the flour (½ cup at a time) and mix just until dough comes together.

Press half of the dough into prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, until lightly golden brown.

Cool completely before filling.

Store remaining sugar cookie dough in a bowl in the refrigerator until ready to use.

For the filling:

Again with stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat together the softened cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice, and 1 Tbsp. of the lemon zest until smooth and creamy. Pour filling over cooled crust. Top filling with the remaining sugar cookie dough by crumbling it evenly over the top.

Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, until cookie crumble is light golden in color.

Top with remaining lemon zest as desired. (My zest got dried out before I had a chance to do this.)

We cut into 16 squares and ate them room temp. I think they would also be good chilled but the crust might get too hard.

Book 13

This was a book club selection and came highly recommended by an Italian exchange student who lived with one of our members a couple years ago. City of Thieves by David Benioff takes place during the Siege of Leningrad, an aspect of World War II that we had read about at least on other time (The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean). I see that at least a couple of my book club friends have given it 5 stars on Goodreads, but I am still wavering between a 3 and 4. I didn't love it for some reason I am still trying to figure out. The story was interesting enough - while the Nazis have the city under siege, Lev and Kolya are arrested. Instead of being executed for their crimes, they are told they can save their own lives by bringing a powerful Soviet colonel a dozen eggs to use in his daughter's wedding cake. Simple enough, right? If only the citizens were not literally starving to death, resorting to eating whatever questionable "food" they can get their hands on. Eggs are not readily available even if one had the money to buy them. It is part historical fiction, part buddy adventure. The author has written screenplays and, to me, the book read like he was already adapting it for the film. And one of the characters consistently annoyed me. I don't know - I learned more details about the siege of Leningrad and the Russian side of WWII, and the book read pretty quickly, kept me wondering how they were going to get through and if they would find eggs ever - but I just didn't love it. For the 2nd month in a row, I may be the outsider at book club who didn't like the book that much.

Baby Hats

Four more hats turned in last Monday (along with my giant bag of yarn). I am working on one now that should be pretty cute but I made a mistake and am trying to decide if I just go with it and knit on or rip back to the boo-boo. The hat is currently sitting in time-out while I decide.