Let’s just close out eyes and pretend we’re sitting under an orange tree. An orange tree heavy with fruit… but with the occasional late blooming blossom. There are honey bees too. Just a few. The friendly kind. The kind of honeybees that remind you that life is full of creatures big and small… and we all have tasks to do.

Let’s just hang out under our orange tree for a while. Right here in the shade, greeted by little spots of sun as the wind spreads the leaves.

It’s nice here.

Sweet. Thanks. I’m glad you’re here.

Simple.  Big.  Bright.  Tangy.  A game changer, taking your day from overcast to bright and shiny with just a sip.  

Thank you to Tracy and Sunset Magazine for the inspiration.  

Super Citrus Smoothie

     adapted from Sunset Magazine

     Print this Recipe!

Here’s what you’ll need for one big smoothie:  

A juicer

A blender

2 Tablespoons Meyer lemon juice

the juice of 1/2 a grapefruit (save the other half for tomorrow’s smoothie?) 

1/2 cup fresh orange or tangerine juice

2 tablespoons honey

heaping 1/2 cup Greek yogurt

1 frozen banana (they blend better when frozen)

1/2 cup ice cubes

In a blender, combine juices, yogurt, and honey.  Blend for a few seconds.  Add the ice cubes and blend until smooth.  This recipe makes one giant smoothie.  Yumtown. 

This list of things that I’ve stolen in my life is pretty small.

There was that piece of candy that I stole from Fedco when I was 7. My Dad caught me chomping on it in the back seat of the car and I got the big morality talk. Lesson: never steal anything too chewy.

There were the Girl Scout cookies I stole from my big sister’s room when she was out on a secret date. I was the natural suspect. I got a good talking to for that one. When I pulled the same cookie thievery the next week, well…. my parents made sure I learned my lesson that time.

Then there were all the times I would sneak into my Mom’s secret chocolate stashes. My Mom’s hiding places were no match for my ability to find a stool and wiggle my way around cabinets looking for sweets.

Thinking back on it, my thievery always involved something delicious that I wanted to put in my tummy. I was pathetically predictable in that sense.

I was once again tempted by the thievery gods this weekend while walking around my neighborhood. There’s citrus EVERYWHERE. Just about every other yard has a blooming orange or lemon tree just begging to be plucked. Isn’t sneaking into someones yard to yank their produce considered theft? I thought back to all of the stern reprimands and spankings I got from stealing yummies as a kid and thought better of sneaking into my neighbor’s yard.

Instead, I forked over some cash at the farmer’s market and felt just fine about making this Honey- Lime Curd.

Does this sort of concession mean my bad girl days are long gone? Sigh….

Honey-Lime Curd with Creme Fraiche

This recipe is alluringly tart. It’s pretty. It’s smooth, and the sweetness is beautifully rounded out by the honey. You could substitute lemons for limes if that’s what you have on hand. Serve this curd on warm scones or with creme fraiche and shortbread cookies. Lovely!

Print this recipe!

5 large egg yolks

1 large egg

2/3 cup fresh lime juice

1 teaspoon finely grated lime zest, plus more for garnish

1/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons honey

4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

Creme Fraiche for serving

In a medium saucepan, bring 1 inch of water to a boil.

In a medium heatproof bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the whole egg, the fresh lime juice, the teaspoon of lime zest and the honey.

Set the bowl with the lime mixture over the boiling water, creating a double boiler. Reduce the heat to moderate and cook the lime mixture, whisking constantly until the curd has thickened to the consistency of mayonnaise, about 7 minutes.

Remove the bowl from the heat and whisk in the butter pieces until smoothly combined. Pass the curd through a fine mesh strainer into a medium bowl.

Ladle the strained curd into 4 cups or ramekins. Press a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the lime curd to prevent a skin from forming; refrigerate until chilled, at least 3 hours.

Top the curd with dollops of creme fraiche and garnish with remaining lime zest.

Serve with shortbread cookies or atop hot, sexy scones.

This cake and I. Ooooh this cake and I.

We had a fight, maybe I should call it a misunderstanding.

I had expectations for this cake. I needed it to be a certain way to make me happy.  Mistakes.

I wanted this cake to be dense, but moist, perfectly golden, easy to cut and just downright irresistible. In other words, I wanted this cake to be perfect. Perfect in the ways I wanted it to be perfect. Oh Joy. It’s like I’ve learned absolutely nothing these past twenty something years.

Nothing is perfect. No, correction. Things can be perfect if imagined in your head. Real life… the real stuff is never as perfect as it is in your head. But… (oh the but). Sometimes. Most times. The imperfections are what become the most perfect part of life.

Boom. Knowledge. I just dropped it.

Here’s the deal with this cake.

I wanted it to be the perfectly delicate but perfectly dense glazed cake. I wanted this cake to be Martha Stewart. Like the perfectly manicured, airbrushed and edited version of Martha Stewart.

It turns out this cake is more like… Mom. She might have her nails all done up some days, but you also know that she wakes up with her hair kinda mashed and those pink foam hair rollers are her best friend in the hour before Sunday church service. You know, Mom… imperfect, but SO so so so so perfect.

This Glazed Lime Cake has no pretensions. It’s baked up in an 8-inch square baking pan and adorned with a simple lime glaze. It’s like the delicious cake version of after dinner green Jello dessert, but better. So much better.

No this cake isn’t perfect, but it’s simple, straight-forward, and it just wants you to return her phone calls so she doesn’t have to worry so much.

Glazed Lime Cake

Bon Appetit January 2009

Print this recipe!

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, divided
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 1/3 cups self-rising flour
• 2 to 3 large limes
• 1/4 cup sugar

Note: This cake has no salt or leavening. That’s because self rising flour has all the stuff you need.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 8-inch square baking pan. Using electric mixer, cream butter and 11/2 cups powdered sugar in large bowl. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Beat in milk, then flour. Transfer batter to prepared pan; smooth top. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, finely grate enough lime peel to measure 1 tablespoon. Halve limes; squeeze enough juice to measure 1/4 cup. Mix peel, juice, and 1/4 cup sugar in small bowl. Set lime syrup aside.

Using skewer, poke holes all over baked cake. Spoon half of lime syrup (about 3 tablespoons) over hot cake. Cool.

Whisk 1 cup powdered sugar into remaining lime syrup; drizzle over cake. Let stand 1 hour. Cut cake into squares.

In Related Cakes:

Southern Style Strawberry Cake

Blackberry Jam Cake

and Mocha Rum Cake

My week- ridiculous.

My best, most darling friend has decided to move from Los Angeles to some strange state called…. Florida?  It’s wonderful for her.  I’m just heartbroken that I won’t have her around to watch me bake and drink wine and talk for hours and hours.

I can get over that heartbreak thanks to my immense amount of rollover cell phone minutes.  I’ll be fine…

BUT!  It seems like  I’ve been saying goodbye to my friend at goodbye parties all week long.  I’m not really a girl that goes to bars, but it seems like each night of the week I’ve been raising a glass to my friend.  It’s been fun.  It’s been almost too fun!  Each night is more ridiculous than the next.

If you haven’t been to a bar in a while, well, let me tell you, it’s madness.  In just one week I’ve… Well let’s just say that I’m going to church in the morning, and no, I didn’t get a tattoo… or did I?

Bon Voyage Sonia my love.

Enough of that, we have cookies to discuss.

These citrus sables will class up any ridiculous week.  Throw together a batch of these slice and bake French butter cookies, and those beers and bar fights will be a distant memory.

Citrus Sables

Baking: from my home to yours

Print this recipe!

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter (preferably high-fat, like Plugra), softened at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted before measuring
1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt
2 large egg yolks, preferably at room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour.

zest of 1 lemon and zest of 1 lime

For the decoration (optional):
1 egg yolk
Crystal or dazzle sugar.

1. Working in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until it is smooth and very creamy. Rub the zest of the lemon and lime into the granulated sugar with your fingertips, creating a fragrant sugar.  Add the sugars and salt to the butter and continue to beat until smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy, about 1 minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in 2 egg yolks, again beating until well blended.

2. Turn off the mixer, pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the mixer and pulse the mixer about 5 times at low speed for 1 or 2 seconds each time. Take a peek; if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of more times; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, stir for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. If you still have some flour on the bottom of the bowl, stop mixing and use a rubber spatula to work the rest of it into the dough. (The dough will not come together in a ball — and it shouldn’t. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you’re aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy dough. When pinched, it should feel a little like Play-Doh.)

3. Scrape the dough onto a work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long (it’s easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form the log). Wrap the logs well and chill them for at least 2 hours. The dough may be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.

4. When ready to bake, center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper and keep it at the ready.

5. To decorate the edges of the sables, whisk the egg yolk until smooth. Place one log of chilled dough on a piece of waxed paper and brush it with yolk (the glue), and then sprinkle the entire surface of the log with sugar. Trim the ends of the roll if they are ragged and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies.

6. Place the rounds on the baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between each cookie, and bake for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the halfway point. When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top. Let the cookies rest 1 or 2 minutes before carefully lifting them onto a cooling rack with a wide metal spatula. Repeat with the remaining log of dough. (Make sure the sheet is cool before baking each batch.)

I think I’m supposed to hate cake mix.  I think, once you get a chef’s coat, you are supposed to turn you nose up at all things packaged, pre-mixed, and all around too good to be true.  Well the truth is, I don’t hate cake mix, or at least I don’t hate it as much as I should.

I could bore you with a pro and con list detailing my love hate relationship with cake mix, but I won’t.  I’ll just say this- I love cake mix because my Mom buys it for 35 cents and then passes it along to me, with that oh-so-great-I-found-a-bargain feeling.  Cake mixes are easy beyond belief, moist every time and really hard to screw up.  But the truth is, even easy to make, 35 cent cake mix isn’t really a bargain.  It’s filled with loads of oils and sugars that I can’t even pronounce.  If I can’t pronounce it, there’s a good chance my insides that don’t what to do with it either.  So, you win and you lose.  Sounds a lot like life, doesn’t it?

I whole heartedly reject what the directions on the cake mix box tells me to do.  If I’m going to make a boxed cake, I’m certainly going to do it my way.  I’m not sure if I can make cake mix couture, but I’m sure as hell going to try.   So to my yellow mix I added lime zest, orange zest, orange juice and toasted coconut.  Hmm…. couture enough?  I don’t know.  I’ll probably have to find a skinny French model wearing a skinny French couture dress to stand next to my cake… then I’ll be able to reasonably call it couture.  Yea…. that’ll do it.

Orange, Lime and Toasted Coconut- Haute Couture

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1 box yellow cake mix

1 box vanilla pudding

4 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup sour cream

zest of 1 orange

zest of 1 lime

juice from half an orange (a scant 1/4 cup)

1  cup toasted sweetened coconut

Lime Glaze

Juice of 1 lime

1 cup powdered sugar

Toasted Coconut for extra fanciness on top of the cake

1.  Mix all of the ingredients together in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, or a large bowl with a hand mixer, on low for 30 seconds, and then on medium for about 2-3 minutes.  Scape down the bowl as necessary to incorporate all of the ingredients.

2.  Pour the batter in a well greased and floured Bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 39-44 minutes, or when a thin knife inserted in the cake comes out clean, and that cake has a nice golden color.

3.   Remove the cake from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes.  Invert the cake onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

4.  Embellish with a lime glaze- The juice of 1 lime added to 1 cup of powdered sugar.  Whisk until no lumps remain.  Pour over Bundt cake, letting the glaze drip down the sides, and sprinkle with toasted coconut