Sunday, October 24, 2010

Just the Right Weekend

for Lemon Bars

It was a busy weekend. My husband went out of town for business, my son had an out of town marching band competition followed by the Homecoming Dance, and I, I had midterms . . . studying for HTML and trying to do an impossible Photoshop project. If I don't have a lot of time to bake, and I don't want to buy something sub par, my fallback is some sort of bar cookie or bar dessert.

My original plan was Raspberry Streusel Bars. When I opened up my trusty Joy of Cooking I found Lemon Bars on the same page - yum! I thought maybe I'd make some of each, but then I took off my crazy hat and realized that 2 desserts does not mesh with Midterm Weekend.

Which to choose? Well, I did have some home grown lemons (not grown at my home), and my husband is not fond of citrus. So since the rest of my friends LOVE lemon bars, and Morris was out of town, Lemon Bars it was.

Well, normally I would make 2 trays for the normal 20 people (minus those who don't DO lemon). But this Sunday we were only slated to have 12-13 people. One tray and have just barely enough, or 2 trays to allow for seconds and doggie bags? I decided on 1, since none of us really need extra dessert. Well good thing I did - even though I was pretty sure I had enough lemons to probably make 2 batches (with a back up of REALemon for those last couple teaspoons of juice if necessary), turns out I had just barely enough for one batch. And then, the next day, I get a call to let me know that it will be a particularly small week, only 6 of us . . .

So, guess who has some spare lemon bars?

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Lianne's 13th Birthday

Every Sunday (well almost, ~49 out of 52 anyway) I have dinner with a group of friends who have become a 2nd family. My husband and I have been participating in this event for about 20 years! For almost 15 of those years I have been bringing homemade desserts as our contribution to the feast shared by 12 to 20 people (sometimes a few more).

Usually I pick what to make for dessert. But it is the group's tradition that on the Sunday we celebrate someone's birthday, the birthday person gets to choose the menu. One of our youngest members, Lianne, had her 13th birthday last Friday. Her growing maturity lead her to not only pick a menu that included salmon and broccoli, but to have an alternate menu (Caesar Salad instead of broccoli) in case the weather was too hot to cook vegetables. How thoughtful!

For her dessert she chose Sosi Cakes, as Blondies are known in the host's home. This was good luck for me as any kind of bar cookie is fast to make, and I had a lot of homework to take care of last weekend.

This is also a great dessert to make if you need to take advantage of early morning hours before the rest of the house is awake. The butter does not need to be pre-softened, so you can start as soon as you are awake enough to be safe around a stove. The batter is stirred, no cake mixers required, so there isn't the risk of waking up anyone who has the luxury of sleeping-in on a Sunday morning. The Blondies were out of the oven and cooling off by 8:30am and I still had the whole day for other tasks!

You can find this recipe in the 75th Anniversary Edition (and some older editions) of the Joy of Cooking, under "Blondies". Enjoy!