Welcome to Baked, a new column in which Amrita Rawat will share her adventures in the kitchen as she explores our fair city. Born in India and a longtime resident of Atlanta, Rawat recently moved to St. Louis to attend graduate school at Washington University. After eating her way through places like Hong Kong, Paris, Budapest, Mumbai and Shangri-La, she discovered a love for baking and a knack for creating inventive and tasty recipes. You can follow her on her sweet journey every other Monday right here on SauceMagazine.com. I often make my desserts based on cravings, and let’s just say, I have a lot of them. Sometimes, I’ll buy ingredients just in the hopes that they will inspire something interesting. And that’s how I purchased a bag of lemons. In the summer, I often crave something fruity and even slightly sour or tangy and, while I love limes in desserts, I don’t often make lemon-flavored sweets (I’ve always loved a good key lime pie, but I don’t remember ever tasting a lemon meringue one).
I bought the lemons with the intention of changing my opinion of them, and I didn’t want to make a typical meringue, so I decided to attempt a lemon-centered recipe. I had read a lot about using lemon curd in desserts, so I started there. Making lemon curd is a lot easier and tastier than I thought. It hit the spot for a lemon craving that I didn’t know I had. I could eat it off a spoon for hours.
So, I baked simple almond-buttermilk muffins and topped them with lemon curd before baking. But then I decided I wanted even more lemon curd and spread it on top after baking them as well. I regret nothing.
Overall, these muffins were seriously tasty and oh-so simple, complete with the creamy buttermilk, tart lemon and nutty almond notes. They’re a summer must-try for sure.
Lemon Curd Muffins Serves 12
Courtesy of Amrita Rawat
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup almond flour (You can use regular flour in place of almond flour and the recipe will still turn out great.)
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
2 eggs
1¼ cup buttermilk (If you don’t have buttermilk, you can replace it with nonfat yogurt.)
4 Tbsp. butter, melted
Zest of 2 lemons
Lemon curd (recipe follows)
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
• In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs, buttermilk, butter and zest; pour over the flour mixture and stir until just blended.
• Divide the batter into a greased muffin pan. Top each cup with 1 teaspoon of lemon curd.
• Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the tops turn just golden and are firm to the touch. Top each 1 additional teaspoon of lemon curd.
• Cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan.
Lemon Curd Courtesy of Amrita Rawat
1 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1 1/3 cup sugar
4 large eggs
Pinch salt
6 oz. butter
• Whisk the zest, lemon juice, sugar, eggs and salt together in a saucepan.
• Add the butter and cook over moderately low heat, whisking constantly until the curd is thick and bubbles break the surface. This should take about 10 minutes.
• Immediately pour through a fine sieve into a bowl. Cover and chill before use.
This article appears in June 2011.