Meyer Lemon-Almond Meringue Tartlets and Holiday Roundup

Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was delightful. I have a few sweet treats from my holidays to share today. For a Christmas dessert, I wanted to make use of my homegrown Meyer lemons but of course couldn’t decide what to make. I mulled it over for days and flipped through several books while considering various cakes, tarts, and frozen desserts. Then, I pulled Baked: New Frontiers in Baking off the shelf, found the little lemon-almond meringue tartlets, and wondered how I’d ever forgotten this recipe from this book. It was just what I wanted to make. They’re cute, individual-sized tartlets with a tangy lemon filling, and the pastry for the tartlet shells was made with an interesting twist. Amaretti cookies were ground and added to the flour in the dough. Amaretto liqueur is also suggested, but I used almond extract instead. Some years are better than others for my lemon trees, but I had plenty of lemons for the curd. I was amazed by the dark yellow color the Meyer lemons gave it, and the flavor was divine. For the fluffy meringue topping, I remembered from recently reading BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts a recipe guaranteed to not weep or collapse over time. I planned to make several tartlets and serve them over the course of a few days. So, I followed the instructions for that magical Marshmallow Meringue which involves heating the egg whites and sugar to 175 degrees F before whipping. Some almond extract was added to the meringue as well. I piled the meringue high on each tartlet and toasted it with a kitchen torch. I can report the meringue performed perfectly and did not weep at all even after leftover tartlets had been refrigerated for three days. The combined result was everything I hoped it would be. 

As usual, I baked possibly as many cookies as Mrs. Claus this year. I returned to a couple of favorite recipes and also tried two new ones. I made my favorite sugar cookie dough for rolled and cut cookies. I decorated them with royal icing and crushed candy canes. I used half of the sugar cookie dough to revisit the Hawaiian Snowballs recipe. This is a favorite cookie of mine with the chopped, dried pineapple and macadamia nuts in the dough. I also made white chocolate-covered Chocolate Peppermint Cookies again. As a big fan of white chocolate and mint, I think these are even better than thin mints. One of the new recipes I tried this year was Chai Snowballs from Martha Stewart Living, and they will definitely be making a repeat appearance. The other new recipe was Cranberry-Oat-Almond Shortbread topped with white chocolate from Sweet: Desserts from London's Ottolenghi. Rather than rolling out the dough and cutting these as suggested in the book, I made two logs of dough and sliced and baked. This recipe was also a keeper. I try to give away as many cookies as possible, but I do have to taste to make sure everything turns out ok, right? After all of that delicious sugar, I’ll be skipping dessert for a bit, but I don’t regret one bite.

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