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Tag Archives: so delicious

I make! Lemon tart edition

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.

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Please to ignore the apple flower and potatoes photobomb.

I make! Hot dog flowers

I had extra hot dogs (kosher, all beef) one time.  I had been putting them into things to try and get rid of them, like soup or eggs or chili or anything else where hot dogs might be a bit unexpected but not overtly disgusting.  I managed to get rid of all the hot dogs except for two.  So I decided to make some hot dog flowers with them.

You might think “hot dog flowers” sound really strange.  I guess it is, rather.  But they’re a staple in a lot of Asian bakeries.  If you look up any Asian bakery, you’ll definitely find some kind of hot dog bread.  Often, they’re kind of in bun form, but not the hot dog buns you’d find annoying packed in 8s as opposed to your hot dog 10-packs.  Asian hot dog buns are slightly sweeter, often topped with sesame seeds, and formed and baked around the hot dog itself.

But I didn’t want to make Asian hot dog buns.  I wanted to make the elusive hot dog FLOWER.  Why a flower over a bun?  No good reason.  Just wanted to.  So I did.

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I kind of mashed a bunch of recipes together to make the bread and I didn’t write it down (of course).  But here’s the original video that inspired the hot dog flowers.  I was also trying to get rid of some green onions (and I didn’t have any sesame seeds) so that’s what I used.  I…also…forgot them…in the oven…maybe.  I didn’t intend for them to get quite as dark as they did.  Oh well.  They still tasted good.