Tag Archives: recipe[dessert]

Lemon Bars

by Sarah | 4 Comments

Every season we like to pick one ingredient and find a variety of ways to love it and use it. This summer it’s lemons! You can find our complete ingredient archive here.

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Lemon bars! Leeeemon Bars!! These are not for the sugar-free, but they’re oh so tasty. I love the tangy flavor and the soft texture of these lemon bars made with fresh lemon juice. Lemon bars are my new go-to party treat because a tiny square can go a long way. I actually halved this recipe because it’s waaaay too much for two people and even a lot for a family of four.

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Lemon Bars

Lemon Bars

Ingredients

  • Crust:
  • 1 stick of butter at room temperature
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Filling:
  • 3 extra-large eggs at room temperature
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoons grated lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons)
  • 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Instructions

  1. Grease a 9x13x2 inch baking sheet.
  2. Mix the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light.
  3. Combine the flour and salt and add to the butter until just mixed. It might seem a bit crumbly, but that is normal.
  4. Gather the dough into a ball inside the bowl.
  5. With floured hands, press the dough into a 9x13x2 inch baking sheet, building up a 1/4-1/2 inch edge on all sides.
  6. Chill in the fridge for at least thirty minutes.
  7. Preheat the oven to 350° and bake the crust for 15 minutes or until very lightly browned.
  8. While the crust is baking, whisk together the lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar, eggs and flour. Pour the mixture over the crust and bake for 30 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature.
  9. Cut into squares and dust with confectioners' sugar and top with berries if desired.
  10. *If you're making lemon bars for a crowd (six or more people) then double the recipe!
https://liveseasoned.com/lemon-bars/

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Whaddya say? Lemon bars for dessert this weekend?!

Notes about Macarons

by Katie | Leave a comment

Nuts are our ingredient of the season. We’ve been using them for sweets, drinks, snack bars and savory condiments!

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We decided to end our season of nuts with the fanciest and fussiest of all nutty desserts, the macaron. We’re talking French macarons here, the kind made with egg whites and ground almonds, not the double-o macaroons made with coconut. But a funny thing about this food post : we don’t include a recipe! As the title suggests, we’re sharing our baking notes about this fickle treat, because while they may cause us to get flustered while baking, we’re not going to stop trying to perfect our technique any time soon!

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I have to admit, I don’t remember where I had my first macaron, but what I do remember is the perfectly light and delicious almond flavor and the cookie’s combination of crunchy exterior and soft and chewy interior. Something I’ve been trying to recreate ever since.

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White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

by Katie | Leave a comment

Nuts are our ingredient of the season. We’ve been using them for sweets, drinks, snack bars and savory condiments!

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For a few years now, we’ve kept a steady supply of the white chocolate macadamia nut Cliff bars in the house. They’re mainly purchased as a quick snack for Calder to take along on bike rides, but honestly, we all love them (even, or especially, Alex) as a quick treat now and then. We also used to pick up more flavors in the past, but over time we finally gave in and admitted that the only flavor we truly loved was the white chocolate macadamia. When I packed one in our bag for the park last weekend, I started to think about how it’s been way too long since I’ve actually had a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie, and it was time to put the Cliff bar down and remedy that. This was the result, and it’s delicious!

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While writing this post, I became curious about the history of the white chocolate and macadamia nut pairing, but information was really hard to come by. The cookie doesn’t even have it’s own wikipedia page, rather it’s just listed as a variant of the chocolate chip cookie! When I mentioned this to Calder, his response was “but it’s so much more than that”, and I couldn’t agree more. Somewhere, someone came up with this fantastic flavor pairing, and it’s time to recognize their genius.

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Hazelnut Liqueur

by Katie | Leave a comment

Nuts are our ingredient of the season.  Dips, cookies, and snack bars, are just a sampling of our many nutty posts. Today, we’re finally combining them with alcohol!

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had Frangelico or any other hazelnut liqueur, but with nuts as our featured ingredient, it was high time that I tried making my own! While doing some research for this project, I came across a Serious Eats article that encourages anyone interested to make their own rather than buy, and I couldn’t agree more. The pure hazelnut flavor really shines through, and I really appreciate being able to taylor the sweetness to my liking, which is often less than store-bought liqueurs.

After liking what Serious Eats’ encouragement to make the liqueur, I clicked through to their recipe and also liked the simplicity of that, so I used it and that’s what you see reprinted below. Making this liqueur couldn’t be easier, it’s the waiting that’s hard. While I want to say it “only” involves three to four weeks of wait-time, that’s three (or four) too many, and I think you’ll agree once you see my new favorite treat below. I say four weeks, because I was supposed to go on to steps 2 and 3 while our family was in town, and I completely forgot! As a result, I had about an extra week of the hazelnuts steeping in the alcohol, but the flavor is that delicious and strong that I have no regrets… although I’m not sure if I’ll be able to wait that long the second time I make this.

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Creamy Cashew Fruit Dip

by Katie | 2 Comments

Nuts are our ingredient of the season. We’ve been using them for sweets, drinks, snack bars and savory condiments!

Yesterday was the cake, and today we’re going to share a recipe for the cashew cream that we served at the party. If you’ve been paying attention, then you’ve noticed that we published a cashew crema recipe last week. Today’s cashew cream recipe is very similar, but rather than a savory condiment, this is a lightly sweet dip that’s perfect when paired with fruit.

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First an aside : two weeks ago while Sarah was visiting, there were many moments when our response to someone or our contribution to the conversation was exactly the same (wether we were responding with a grunt, a laugh, an “ooh”, or with actual words like “no way”). It was equally hilarious and spooky. And our cashew cream recipes are yet another example of us wanting to do the exact same thing at the same moment, let’s ignore the fact that it involved nuts and our mom would suggest that we’re both a bit nuts. 

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Bulldozer Birthday Cake!

by Katie | Leave a comment

Alex turned two at the end of April, and the timing worked perfectly that we had a house full of family ready to celebrate! Since we weren’t inviting his super cute little friends, we didn’t bother to have a theme party. Plus, how could we pick just one theme for the guy who loves, in no particular order : kitty cats, anything with wheels (and wings!), dinos, tools, and speed? We could have gone with a bike-riding kitty cat holding a screw driver, but without including the dinosaur, why even bother, you know?

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Even without a theme, I wanted to make a cake that the little guy would love. I also wanted it to be relatively simple. There are so many awesome ideas out there, just scanning Pinterest can put you into option overload. Want to see my kids’ party board? This is where I’ve become good at putting my blinders on. I have sense of what will excite Alex the moment he sees it, and that’s my first criteria in picking a cake. The second criteria is that it be simple, especially since I had my hands full this year. Once I found “the” cake, I stopped looking. And that’s that.

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Homemade Nutella

by Katie | 2 Comments

 Nuts are our ingredient of the season. You can visit our full archive of nut posts here.

When we picked nuts as our ingredient of the season, I was excited because I knew it would encourage me to try some new recipes, and this homemade nutella is the perfect example. We are a nutella-loving household, but I had never thought to make my own until now.

liveseasoned_spring2015_nutella2-1024x834 copyIf you aren’t familiar with Nutella, it’s a chocolate and hazelnut-based spread from Italy. The original recipes consisted of mostly chocolate and hazelnut, but unfortunately the main ingredients for the modern recipe are sugar and palm oil. And that’s why this is a treat worth making at home, because as you’ll see, this recipe has a solid base of hazelnuts and chocolate. Of course, it also means that making this batch will cost more than picking up a jar from your local market, particularly if you buy quality hazelnuts and choclate, but I think you’ll discover that it’s worth the price. Additionally, jars of homemade nutella make great gifts from the kitchen {in fact, if only I had thought about it sooner, this would have been the perfect treat for Easter baskets!}.

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Homemade Nutella

Homemade Nutella

Ingredients

  • 1 cup hazelnuts
  • 12 ounces milk chocolate
  • 3 Tbsp powdered sugar
  • 2 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
  • 1 Tbsp cocoa powder
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla

Instructions

  1. Toast the hazelnuts on a cookie sheet in a 350F oven. Be sure to stir them every few minutes, and they will be done when they just start to brown and their skins blister (may take anywhere from 7-10 minutes).
  2. Once done, immediately pour the nuts onto a clean kitchen towel and rub vigorously to remove the skins. It's ok if some skins remain stuck to the nuts. Let them cool completely before using.
  3. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (we like to use a pyrex measuring cup in a pot of simmering water).
  4. In a food processor, finely grind the hazelnuts until they begin to form a paste. Add the oil, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and vanilla, and continue processing until the mixture is as smooth as possible. Add the melted chocolate and blend well.
  5. If there are any chunks of hazelnuts, strain them out. The nutella will be thin and runny until it cools. It will keep on the counter for up to two weeks (if it lasts that long!).
https://liveseasoned.com/homemade-nutella/

It’s common to spread nutella on toast, but that doesn’t interest me. I prefer it with a banana or on a scoop of vanilla ice cream. How do you eat your nutella? Straight from the spoon?

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Black Walnut Shortbread Cookies

by Katie | Leave a comment

Nuts are our ingredient of the season. You can see our full archive of nut posts here!

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We have the perfect treat to compliment all of the sugar and chocolate that is sure to be passed around this weekend : black walnut shortbread cookies. Sure, shortbread cookies have quite a bit of butter, but a little fat never hurts, and with only a half cup of sugar in this batch, they help to balance those peep and jellybean filled baskets.

Since we’re all about nuts this season, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to talk about walnut varieties. If you’re eating a walnut right now, chances are it’s an English walnut, also known as a common, Persian, and California walnut. That variety is native to the Eastern hemisphere from China through parts of the Middle East (where it’s Persian name comes from), was spread throughout the world on English trading ships (thus the English moniker), and by the 1700s was being grown in groves in California! If you’ve eaten a walnut, it’s likely that it was the milder common walnut rather than the black walnut used in today’s recipe.

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Sarah’s Warm Winter Drink

by Sarah | Leave a comment

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I really didn’t know what to call this warm milk creation.  I certainly don’t want to call it that.  It is kind of a mix between horchata and Spanish rice pudding, but I wouldn’t want to offend anyone by calling it that because I made this recipe up. I don’t really know if it is anything like authentic Spanish rice pudding or Mexican horchata and that’s why we’ll refer to it as Sarah’s warm winter drink, a name that’s completely non-descriptive, whoops. It’s a pretty awesome drink though and you can make it several different ways so don’t let its disappointing name discourage you.  Vegan? We got you covered too.  Like most recipes and projects on Seasoned, we try to give you the gist of the recipe, but encourage you to make it your own. Katie and I cook depending on seasonal ingredients and what’s in our cupboards, which means lots of these recipes are adaptable.

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Pistachio and Orange Torrone

by Katie | 5 Comments

Orange is our ingredient of the season. You can find our full archive of zesty orange posts here, with everything from cocktails and cakes to candies and cleansers.

If you’re looking for a fun alternative to chocolates for Valentine’s Day, pistachio and orange torrone may be it! But I have to admit, it took me over two months to build up the courage to try making this recipe. Calder came across it in an issue of Bon Appetit while researching recipes for Thanksgiving. The ingredients were purchased, and I promised to make it for the holiday (Thanksgiving, not Valentine’s Day). Then I didn’t, and I didn’t make it for Christmas or New Year’s, but here we are and I’m finally making the sweet for my sweet!pistachio and orange torrone

Torrone is a nougat-type treat made from honey, sugar, egg whites, and nuts, commonly almonds. The nougat comes in two varieties, either hard and brittle or soft and chewy. This recipe is for the soft and chewy variety. Torrone is a traditional Spanish treat served at Christmas, and is popular in many countries that were previously under Spanish rule, including Italy, Latin America, and the Philippines. The combination of citrus flavor and pistachios in this pistachio and orange torrone recipe are characteristics of an Italian torrone.

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