Mama's lemon cake

which turned out quite well, considering it is absolutely impossible to whip evaporated milk in this country...

Lemon Cake

1 lemon (zest and juice)

1 glass of sugar

1 glass of water

175g of evaporated milk

Lemon gelatine (brought from Spain, so who knows how to get it here in the same format)

6 digestive biscuits

A bit of milk and a teaspoon of liqueur (I used baileys).

Some more sugar for the caramel (~3tbsp)

Put the sugar for the caramel in a fireproof tin (I used a normal oven tin) and melt it over the fire until it gets liquid. Let it cold down.

In a sauce pan mix water, lemon zest, juice and the sugar. Heat until it starts boiling. Remove from the fire and add the gelatine. Leave to cool down a bit.

Whip the evaporated milk (if you can!). I tried for quite a long time and gave up, but my mum swears she can do it...

Mix the milk with the sugar/lemon mixture and then pour over the cold solidified caramel. 

Mix three or four tablespoons of milk with the baileys and dunk the biscuits (without getting them soft!). Arrange on top of the cake (no need to make it too pretty, as this will be the bottom of the cake).

Leave it overnight in the fridge.

Lemon Souffle

Very easy to make and really few ingredients! It looks and feels like a cheesecake :-)

Lemon Souffle

For the base:
200 g digestive biscuits
100 g butter (at room temperature)

For the mix:
4 eggs
2 lemons
Small tin of condensed milk

To make the base, crumble the biscuits on a food processor and then mix with the butter and 1 tbsp of water. Pour into a 20cm round oven tin and cover the bottom and sides, pressing with the fingers until you have an even layer.

Squueze the lemons and sift the juice into a bit bowl. Add the egg yolks (of the four eggs) and the condensed milk. Mix well.

Whip the egg whites until stiff and then add to the lemon mix in two steps, stirring carefully.

Pour the mix over the biscuit base and bake at 180C for 30-35 minutes, until the top of the souffle is golden.

Take the souffle from the oven and let it cool down. (I think it's a lot better when it's been in the fridge)

Lemon and Meringue Tart

I made this tart a few months ago, but hadn't had time to upload the recipe.

I think it looks quite impressive, but it wasn't one of my favourites, too lemony!

The tricky bit for me was to get the meringue toasted... You're supposed to use a torch for this, but I didn't have one, so I tried both with the grill and with a lighter - probably not the best idea!

Anyway, here it goes:

Lemon and meringue tart

For the base:
200 g plain flour
70 g ground almonds
40 g white sugar
1 large egg
85 g butter at room temperature (plus a bit for greasing the tin)
A pinch of salt

For the lemon mix:
200 ml lemon juice
160 g white sugar
140 g butter
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
20 g cornflour

For the meringue:
2 egg whites
100 g white sugar

Grease the bottom and sides of a 22 cm round oven tin and cover the base with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 180C.

To make the base, mix the flour, almonds, sugar, egg, butter and salt in a bowl with your fingers.

Now, to extend the base, you're supposed to use a rolling pin over a floured surface. However, I find this quite difficult, so what I did was to take small bits of the dough and mash them with my fingers into the oven tin little by little until the whole base was covered.

Cover the pastry with another piece of baking paper and put some dry chickpeas over.

Bake the base in the oven, at 180C, for 15 minutes. Remove the chickpeas and the baking paper and bake for another 10 minutes.

To prepare the lemon mix, heat the lemon juice with half of the sugar and the butter in a sauce pan. In a bowl, beat the eggs, the yolks, the rest of the sugar and the cornflour.

Add the lemon juice, sugar and butter mix to this bowl (while it's still warm) and beat well. Pour back into the sauce pan and cook at a low heat, stirring continuously, until it thickens.

Remove from the fire, leave to cool down and then pour into the base.

To make the meringue, whip the egg whites and then add the sugar. Continue beating to get soft peaks.

Using a piping bag, form small meringue drops all over the cake. Then use the oven grill or a blow torch to toast the meringue so it gets a golden colour.