We invited some friends over for dinner last week and the weather was frightfully hot. Temperatures were extremely humid and over 100 degrees all week. My immediate thought was, “something cool, that I don’t have to make in my kitchen.” We live in a very old house, I think it was built around 1880, this means that we don’t have central air. It was a major point of consideration before we purchased the house but in the end it’s charm won us over. We have several window units that cool our house surprisingly well, but the kitchen is always hot. I don’t have a unit in the kitchen itself due to the lack of a good window and as soon as I begin using the oven or the stove, forget it.

I decided on a menu of ribs (that I could marinate the night before and Eric could grill), salad and corn on the cob picked up on the way home from the road side stand. Another point to take into consideration when creating a menu when it’s hot and humid, the heat tends to curb the appetite; keep it simple and cool. In going with the cool theme, I choose to make a key lime cheesecake for dessert.

I’ve made this recipe successfully before and love the subtle taste of lime combined with layers of flavor and the smooth rich cheesecake. The recipe is from Epicurious.com.

To start the cheesecake, make the lime custard. Combine the eggs, sugar, lime zest and lime juice in a small saucepan over medium heat.

Stir the mixture constantly until it begins to boil, continue stirring while it boils for 30 seconds. Your arm will hurt after this, you have to stir constantly for about 10 minutes; it’s worth it, I promise.

Take the custard off the heat once it has thickened.

Place custard in a small bowl and allow to cool to room temperature.

It’s time to make your crust. Melt the butter and pour it into the mixture of sugar and graham cracker crumbs. Mix it well until it looks like wet sand, I like to use a fork to mix it.

Press all of the graham cracker mixture into the springform pan so that it’s even and comes up the sides an inch or so. Bake for 5 minutes at 350 degrees.

Now for the filling. Using an electric mixer, combine softened cream cheese, sugar, eggs, lime zest and lime juice until smooth and well mixed.

Before filling the crust, wrap the pan in 3 layers of tin foil. This helps to seal the pan from the water that you bake it in.

Find your custard, which should have thickened even more by now.

Spread the custard into the crust evenly.

Spread the cream cheese filling on top of the custard evenly.

Bake the cheesecake in a water bath (place your cheesecake pan in a larger lipped pan with about an inch of water in it) for 45 minutes.

While the cheesecake is in the oven, whisk together sour cream and sugar until smooth. When the cheesecake is slightly firm in the center, after the first 45 minutes, spread the sour cream mixture over the top evenly and bake for another 10 minutes.

Once you take the cheesecake out of the oven, run a knife around the outside to loosen it and then chill in the fridge overnight.

To serve, unhinge your springform pan and run a knife around the outside again. Gently, lift the sides of the pan off. Place onto your favorite serving plate and top with a slice of lime.

The cheesecake tasted exactly how I wanted and was a cool and delicious end to a great meal!

Here’s the full recipe from Epicurious.com:

Key Lime Cheesecake

Ingredients

• 6 large egg yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 6 tablespoons fresh Key lime juice or regular lime juice
• 1 teaspoon grated Key lime peel or regular lime peel

• 1 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs (about 12 whole graham crackers)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

• 2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature
• 2/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tablespoons fresh Key lime juice or regular lime juice
• 1 tablespoon grated Key lime peel or regular lime peel

• 1 16-ounce container sour cream

Preparation

In an effort to stick with my Summer flavors of blueberry and lemon, as mentioned in my last post here, I made some awesome cupcakes last week. I was looking to make cupcakes because I had wandered into the baking aisle at Michael’s a few weeks back and made an impulse buy of some larger pastry tips for icing and some really cute cupcake papers. Have any of you been in that aisle? They have some really cool stuff and I don’t think I can go there without buying something new for baking.

Anyway, because it was Summer, I searched for a recipe that was lighter and included fruit. I knew blueberries were in season and began looking for a blueberry cupcake. I came across a recipe that I had made a few years back for blueberry cupcakes from Epicurious.com, that resemble blueberry muffins, but are lighter and sweeter. This recipe called for a maple frosting which turned out to be mediocre so I threw caution to the wind and decided to pair the cupcake with a lemon icing. (I like to live dangerously!)

The cupcakes are very simple and only took me about 20 minutes to mix up. Start by combining your dry ingredients and mixing well and then set aside.

Using an electric mixer, mix together the oil and butter. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in buttermilk, vanilla, milk and grated lemon peel.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until everything is well combined. Add the blueberries and stir in with a spoon or spatula so that you don’t squish them.

Fill the cupcake papers 3/4 full with the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 23 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool on a cooling rack.

While waiting for the cupcakes to cool, mix up the frosting. Start by beating the butter until fluffy with an electric mixer. Add powdered sugar gradually and beat constantly. Add lemon juice, lemon peel and vanilla. Add more lemon juice to make the frosting more spreadable, if desired.

Top the cupcakes with the frosting and a few fresh blueberries.

Aren’t they pretty?

 

Here are the recipes from Epicurious.com:

Blueberry Hill Cupcakes

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk or low-fat yogurt
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 1 1/4 cups fresh blueberries, frozen for 4 hours

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two 12-cup muffin pans with paper liners. Sift flour and next 4 ingredients into large bowl. Whisk melted butter and oil in medium bowl. Add eggs; whisk to blend. Whisk in buttermilk, milk, vanilla extract, and peel. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients; whisk just to blend. Stir in frozen blueberries. Divide batter among liners.

Bake cupcakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 23 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to racks; cool.

Lemon Frosting

Ingredients

1/3 c. butter

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/4 c. fresh lemon juices

1/2 tsp. finely shredded lemon peels

4 1/2 c. sifted powdered sugar

Preparation
Beat butter in a mixing bowl until it is fluffy. Add 2 c. of the powdered sugar gradually, beating constantly. Slowly beat in lemon juice, lemon peel and vanilla. Slowly beat in the rest of the powdered sugar. If necessary, add a little more lemon juice if frosting is not spreadable. Use immediately.

 

As promised, I finally made a cherry pie this weekend. Cherry pie is both Eric and my favorite dessert. When we first started dating and found out that we both loved cherry pie, I think it was a sign to both of us that we were meant for each other. Soon after discovering this fact, I made him a cherry pie from scratch and our fate was sealed (at least he tells me that convinced him)!

Typically, we eat cherry pie in the Summer, when the cherries are fresh and in February for Eric’s birthday. This year, after picking 20 lbs of cherries, as mentioned in the previous post here, I think we will have cherry pie all year long. I must take a minute though to give Eric a big thank you, he was amazing and sat in front of the Tour de France on Saturday morning/afternoon and pitted much more than half of the cherries he picked. And that is why I married him; he’s the best. In turn, I made a delicious cherry pie that afternoon.

A pie begins with the crust. I make my pie crust with all butter as opposed to half butter and half shortening, a recipe from a William-Sonoma Pies cookbook. (Double the recipe when making top and bottom crust or a lattice top.) Cube the butter and then stick it back into the fridge so it gets really cold; all ingredients for pie crusts need to be kept as cold as possible, if the dough is too warm it will get sticky and tear.

Pull out your food processor and fill it with the flour, sugar and salt.

Pulse a few times so that everything is well incorporated.

Side note: If you have a food processor and aren’t using it for making pie crust, I think you’re crazy. I used to do the old “cutting in” method with two butter knives and it doesn’t come close to the ease of the food processor. Not only does it mix the dough up faster, in mixes it better and all the butter is uniform in size. I started using one a few years ago and have never looked back.

Once the dry ingredients are mixed, fill a water glass with ice and cold tap water and set aside. Add the cold butter cubes to the flour mixture and pulse until it looks like course sand.

 While the food processor is on, add the ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time until the dough sticks into a ball and looks moist (1-3 tablespoons should do the trick).

Once the dough forms a ball, take it out of the processor (watch the blades!) and cut it in half. Wrap in plastic and stick both halves in the fridge for a half hour.

While the crust is chilling, mix up the tart cherries, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, vanilla, and tapioca. Let sit while rolling out the crust.

Did the tapioca throw you off? Cherry pie is really juicy and I have found that cornstarch alone does not thicken it as much as I like. I add just one tablespoon of quick cooking tapioca to the filling and it thickens everything perfectly. You can’t taste or notice it, I promise.

The secret to rolling out good crust is making sure it doesn’t stick and adding a little flavor. I use a base of flour, white sugar and cinnamon to roll out this pie crust. Put a bunch on your work surface and the more on top of the crust.

Each time you roll, spin the dough a bit and add more flour/sugar/cinnamon to the top of it. Use a rolling pin, but do not press hard and roll in different directions. Be patient, this will take a few minutes, if you rush the dough will tear.

Once the circle looks large enough for your pie dish, roll it up on your rolling pin and then roll it back out over the pie dish. Fold under all the edges and use your fingers to flute the edges.

Fill the pie shell with the cherries that have been sitting and all the collected juices; top with dots of unsalted butter. Roll out the second crust, as you did the first. Use a pizza or dough cutter or sharp knife and cut long strips, if you choose to do a lattice topped pie.

Weave the pieces gently on top of the pie to create a nice pattern.

Place in a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes, then decrease the heat to 350 degrees and bake for 40-50 minutes until the pie is bubbling.

Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (yes, mine was home made) and some whipped cream for good measure (not home made, Redi Whip). It was delicious.

Here are the recipes, remember to double the pie crust if you using crust on top of your cherry pie.

Pie Crust

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter
1-4 tablespoons ice water

Combine flour, sugar and salt. Cut in the butter until course, slowly add the ice water and mix together until well combined but not too wet. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling out on floured surface.

Cherry Pie Filling

Ingredients

4-5 cups of tart cherries, pitted
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon quick cooking tapioca
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine all ingredients and pour into prepared pie shell. Top with crust or lattice top. Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees; lower temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 40-50 minutes until the filling is bubbling. Remove from oven allow to cool so the filling sets. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.