Grapefruit Shortbread Bars

I've relayed to you my penchant for apple cinnamony things. You know what's also up there? Citrus. You know what's also in season pretty much year-round? That's right--pucker up, y'all. I started thinking about doing something with citrus when I was running around our local farmer's market a few weeks ago. Although I really long for the summery days when the stalls are overflowing with zucchini, tomato, and corn, I still go in the winter because I gotta get outta the house every once in a while with this baby, and because the eggs are absolutely ridiculous. Yard eggs, farmed eggs, whatever they are. They're amazing and beautiful, and I love them over easy (whites cooked all the way through fortheloveofallthatisholy!) on some avocado toast. Or some sauteed spinach and mushrooms. Or on, like, just a plate. In any case, if you have the opportunity to support your local farmers and get some delicious eggs that were probably laid yesterday, I highly suggest you do.

Anyway, in addition to the eggs, I also got some citrus--grapefruit. I feel as though grapefruit don't get as much love as the lemon in baking. Or as much as the blood orange, which I see everywhere in blog recipes, but I have yet to find a blood orange in my local area (although if you do happen upon them, lemme know, because I've got plans laid out...). The grapefruit is like the citrus people eat while they're dieting, and it doesn't have to be! Just as it has a place next to the dieter's fat-free cottage cheese and hard-boiled egg breakfast, it has a place in delicious baked goods. Case in point--these grapefruit bars. They're a play on the classic lemon bar, which I love.

 Like lemon bars, these have a basic shortbread crust that comes together easily. The filling is tart, sweet, and rich. When I first tested this recipe and brought it out along with the salted caramel pretzel brownie and king cupcakes, I honestly thought it would be overlooked. I was pleasantly surprised to find that people seemed more eager to try the grapefruit bar than either of the other two. Perhaps they shared my love of citrus, or perhaps they were simply curious--either way, those who tried it definitely seemed to enjoy it. I know I did.

I juiced the grapefruit with this helpful guy I bought at Publix. 

Mardi Gras King Cupcakes

Welcome back! It shouldn't be a secret that I don't know what I'm doing. That is to say I have no formal training in cooking, let alone baking. I actually used to shun baking because it required too much precision and felt a little too much like college-level introductory chemistry lab (which, if I'm being honest, I did not pass the first go-around). I liked stove top cooking where I could just throw mostly whatever I wanted in all willy nilly--amounts, temperature, time--and I was good to go as long as I didn't burn the garlic. Slowly, I began to embrace aspects of baking. The cookie. The quick bread. The crisp. The cupcake. You know what I wasn't prepared for?

A yeast bread. A baking feat that involves caring for a living thing--an organism that requires a particular temperature in its environment and, like, food. Last year, I probably would've shied away from this task, but now that I've got four months of baby-rearing under my belt, I figure I can feed some yeasties. So, after that pep talk, I decided to dive in and make some sort of king cake treat--cupcakes seemed like the way to go. 

After some thorough scouring of the Internet for instructions on how to deal with this dough without a KitchenAid stand mixer, I think I figured it out. So, if you're like me, and you're new enough to this game that you don't yet have a need for such an expensive piece of baking equipment, bust out your hands. According to the folks who know, it's good to start familiarizing yourself with these doughs by hand and then moving to a mixer. #Winning? 

The most important things I took away from this experience were that I needed a kitchen thermometer, I had to be careful not to add too much flour to the dough, and that working with the dough was like trying to put hosiery on an octopus. I'm just not accustomed to it quite yet, but I'll get there. The nice thing about this recipe is that even if you mangle the dough as you're trying to roll it up before slicing it, it doesn't really matter. You end up putting the slices/pieces/jaggedy chunks of dough into muffin tins (I highly recommend silicon liners if you have them), and they come out of the oven golden brown, twisty, cinnamony, and beautiful. 

These festive little cupcakes have a light base that's flavorful yet not too sweet, finished up with a lemon cream cheese frosting and colored sugar. If you're looking to bake a Mardi Gras treat, and you too have been looking to step outside of your cookie-quickbread baking comfort zone, I highly suggest that you give these goodies a go. I've tried to lay out the recipe in such a way that the you can easily see the steps (super photo heavy)--it's definitely one worth attempting. 

Let the Good Times Roll, y'all!

Call for Testers: 12th Avenue Flea V-Day Extravaganza!

This post will not be as photo-laden as previous ones because it's mostly to say that I've got some recipes that I'm testing, and I'm looking for some folks to both take them off of my hands and give me some constructive feedback before I finalize the recipes and throw them into the Internet ether.

Where will I be?
I'll be out at the 12th Avenue Flea, located out in front of the old Sacred Heart building (1010 N. 12th Ave, Pensacola, Florida 32501) this Saturday, February 14, from 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. I'll be sharing a table with my mad-crafter sister of Felt Up Good fame.

I'm not selling the baked goods. I'm just giving them away. There may be a tip jar if eaters feel compelled to contribute to the Sugar-Butter-Flour fund, but that's about it. At this point, that's not my goal--I just want to make treats that people like, and it's easier to do that if both the goods and I leave my kitchen from time to time.

What are the Goods?
Here's the tentative plan:
Salted Caramel Pretzel-Crusted Brownies
Grapefruit Shortbread Bars
Mardi Gras King Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

The brownies will make use of the salted caramel I figured out how to make earlier this week.

I've never been a huge fan of caramel, but I think it might just be that I'd never had anything but store-bought or pre-made caramel. To me, this stuff tastes... rounder? I have a hard time describing it. It seems to have more depth than what I'd remembered caramel-flavored things having. It's sweet (because it's sugar), salty (salt), rich (cream), and it has layers of flavor, probably from the caramelization and the vanilla... I don't actually know anything about candy making. This project was all totally new to me, and I can certainly write about it more coherently after taking several more cracks at it. I thought it would be far more difficult than it was, which is how I feel about a lot of aspects of baking. Thus, this blog. 

The grapefruit bars will be similar to a traditional lemon bar. I have always been a huge grapefruit fan, and I've been seeing them all over at the farmer's market, so I thought I'd make use of them. Although I've never actually seen or tasted a grapefruit bar before, I've been reassured by Pinterest that others have thought of them before. As such, this will just be my take on it. 

The cupcakes are the most ambitious good I'm attempting, as they utilize a yeast dough, something not in my repertoire, not even a little bit. And I don't have a fancy stand mixer. Don't worry. Even if it all goes south, and I end up breaking my hands trying to knead dough, you'll at least have brownies and citrus bars. 

Come on down. Try some treats. Check out some softies. Say hello. 

Curious about the 12th Avenue Flea?

Check them out on Facebook .