Daring Baker's Challenge: Lemon Cream Cheese Quick Bread

Oh hey, how are you blog?

This semester has been crazy - I'm working tons of hours and I still have class and Journal to attend to, so it's been wild! But, it's starting to relax a little, so that's good! I decided to do this month's Daring Bakers' Challenge, because I've embarrassingly missed the last two. Last month, in all fairness, was biscuits - I have baked way more than my fair share of those!

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

I decided to make a lemon bread that is reminiscent of a bread we used to get at my job in Ann Arbor. Everyday that we had interviews, we would get breakfast pastries catered in for the corporate recruiters. There were always croissants, which had been baked the day before and consequently tasted pretty sad - we used to joke that they must be fat free! My favorite thing was a lemon poppy seed bread with a strip of cream cheese filling through the middle. This bread is like that, though I must admit, the bread at work was better!

Lemon Cream Cheese Bread (Adapted from Land O Lakes) - Makes 2 Loaves

• 2 c sugar 
• 1 c unsalted butter (softened)
• 4 eggs
• 1c milk
• 6 TBSP lemon juice
• 3 1/2 C flour
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 8 oz cream cheese (softened)
• 6 TBSP powdered sugar
• 1 egg 

1. Preheat oven to 350. 
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth. 
3.  Add in the milk and lemon juice and mix until combined.
4. Mix in flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix together until well-combined. 
5. For the filling, cream together the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and egg until smooth.
6. Pour one quarter of the batter into the bottom of two greased loaf pans. Pour half or the filling into each loaf pan. Pour the rest of the batter over the tops of each loaf.
7. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour. Let rest for at least then minutes, and then turn out of the pan to cool. 

Lemon Meringue Pie

I made a lemon meringue pie the other day, and I haven't wanted to bake anything else since. So, I basically haven't. I've baked three in the last two weeks. That's a lot of pie. I rationalized eating this pie all the time by telling myself that it contained fruit and eggs - that's basically healthy, right?

I'd recommend baking this in a deep pie dish. One of the times I baked this, I didn't have a pie dish so I baked it in a casserole with a lid. That actually worked extremely well because I didn't have to worry about the plastic wrap harassing the meringue. It looked kind of funny, though.

Lemon Meringue Pie - from Food Noveau

Ingredients

• Pre-baked pie crust (I'm lazy and I use the pre-made pie crusts from the grocery store that you just roll out - follow the directions on the box for baking a cold pie)
• 1/2 C Unsalted butter
• 3/4 C Lemon juice (fresh is best, but again, I'm lazy so I often use Costco's bottled lemon juice)
• 3/4 C Sugar
• Zest from one lemon
• Pinch of Salt
• 6 Eggs - separate the whites for the meringue from 3 of the eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 7 TBSP Sugar

Instructions

1. Bake the pie crust according to the directions on the box or your standard recipe. After, turn the oven temperature down to 375.
2. In a saucepan, put in the butter, 3/4 C of sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Turn the heat on low and whisk until melted.
3. In a bowl, beat together 3 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks.
   
4. After the butter mixture is fully melted, spoon some slowly into the egg mixture and stir. Do this a few more times, to raise the temperature of the egg mixture slowly.
   
5. Off heat, pour the egg mixture into the saucepan with the butter mixture. Put it back on the heat, and whisk constantly.
   
6. If the eggs start to scramble - hopefully this doesn't happen - pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer.
   
7. Cook mixture until it begins to thicken. You will notice this as you drag your whisk across the mixture and the the lines you leave close up more slowly. This takes about 6-8 minutes.
8. Pour the mixture into the baked pie crust and bake for 12 minutes. Take the pie out of the oven. It will still be rather jiggly, but don't worry.
9. For the meringue, beat the eggs with an electric mixer on high until soft peaks form. If you're not sure what type of peak you're looking for, check this out. After the soft peaks form, add in the vanilla extract. Turn the mixer back on and spoon in the sugar one tablespoon at a time. After all the sugar is added, beat the mixture until stiff peaks form.
   
10. After the meringue is mixed, spoon or pipe the mixture onto the pie. Make sure you take the meringue all the way to the outer edges, as it will shrink as it cools and this will keep the yellow part of the pie from being exposed.
11. Put the pie back in the oven. If you have an electric oven, turn the oven to broil; if it's gas, just leave it at 375. Watch the pie, and take it out when the meringue starts to brown. This takes about 3-5 minutes, depending on your oven. Seriously though, watch it!
12. Remove the pie and cool for at least 5 hours, preferably overnight. Let the pie sit out of the oven but not in the refrigerator for about an hour, as this minimizes the chance of the meringue cracking. Then cover and refrigerate.
    

Smitten Kitchen's Lemon Bread

I made Smitten Kitchen's Braided Lemon Bread. Oh, my goodness. So, so delicious. I followed the recipe except that I recently bought some lemon oil so I substituted that for the lemon zest and I used some fancy lemon juice the boyfriend got at Costco instead of fresh. Also, um, I beat yeast. I made it work! In case you hadn't noticed, yeast and I don't tend to get along. This is one of the only things I've ever made with yeast that worked out. Woohoo!