Random moosages as I see fit.

I’ve been looking for a good lemon bar recipe for a long time now. Most lemon bar recipes I find are too sweet and not lemony enough. The last recipe I tried, which is my favorite thus far, is Chef John’s Lemon Bars recipe. The lemon filling is very lemony, with the right amount of tartness (for me, which might be considered full-on sour for everyone else, and yes I did slightly reduce the sugar). I’m not sold on the crust so much. It’s good, but I think I would like to find something a little more substantial. The shortbread is a really good shortbread. Maybe I’m looking for something less like shortbread. I haven’t decided.

But anyway, the last time I tried out the recipe, I didn’t go the standard lemon bar route. I decided to make them in my small tart pans. Because it was fancy. They look really nice as small lemon tarts though. And since the lemon custard filling leaves me with a bunch of extra egg whites, I used them to make an Italian meringue (because I don’t really like forcing uncooked eggs on people even though an undercooked/uncooked egg doesn’t bother me at all) and piped it over the top. Busted out my small torch too. Like I said, fancy.

Please to ignore the apple flower and potatoes photobomb.

A-pusher donated a bottle of Kahlúa to me recently because I wanted to make Kahlúa mocha milkshakes.  Which I have and will be a later post.  But you only need so much Kahlua in a milkshake and I still had a goodly amount of Kahlúa left.  What do?  Make Kahlúa chocolate pudding pies.

My first exposure to a Kahlúa infused pie was with Marie Callender’s Kahlúa cream cheese pie.  But I’ve always thought that it would be better if there was less cream cheese and more chocolate (and possibly Kahlúa, but definitely more chocolate).  I also really like Marie Callender’s chocolate satin pie and always thought that Kahlúa would be really good with that.  So, I combined them.

I wanted a pie with the texture of a French silk pie where it’s kind of dense but airy at the same time.  But…I didn’t really want to deal with a sabayon (with Kahlúa instead of Moscato), which I think it needs to create that particular texture (if you don’t want to use raw egg).  Soooo…I didn’t bother and made pudding pies instead.  Still lots of chocolate, just with a pudding texture instead of a French silk pie texture.

The crust was a sleeve and a half of Oreos (probably 20ish cookies?), crushed, and processed with about 4-5oz butter, melted.  I divided the cookie mixture up evenly among eight 4oz wide mouth mason jars and baked them at 350degF until fragrant, probably about 15min.

The pudding part was mostly following this recipe from Foodie with Family.  I have to say that the procedure is…interesting.  I mean, it definitely works.  But I don’t think I’ve ever tried making a custard with the egg already added at the beginning.  I’ve always added it afterward and after tempering the eggs.  I feel like it’s too easy to get cooked egg pieces following the given procedure.  I dunno.  It’s kind of weird because you’re making a custard but with cornstarch.  Cornstarch doesn’t thicken until boiling.  But then you get cooked egg at boiling.  Then again, you’re straining the end mixture, so you won’t have weird egg pieces in your pudding.  That’s something.

Anyway, I subbed the 3 cups of whole milk with 1 cup of heavy cream and 2 cups of 1%.  It’s what I had on hand.  I also subbed the bittersweet chocolate out for dark chocolate, as because that’s what I had on hand.  If you think about it, this pudding procedure is a mash of stuff.  You’re making an egg based custard but also with cornstarch and then with that mixture, you’re basically making a ganache.  So many techniques!

I made these in the small mason jars because I didn’t want to store a whole pie.  The idea was originally to make a bunch and stick them in the freezer so that I could have readily available dessert for when I needed it.  But…that didn’t happen.  I had a mild complainy fest with a friend over some pie and I gave her two, one for her and one for her mom; then I slated another one to A-pusher (but she might not receive it), since it was originally her bottle of Kahlua; I was feeling sorry for myself one day and ate another pie, my brother wanted a pie…yeah, none of the pies made it into the freezer.  Oh well.