Lemon Meringue Pie should be creamy and tart, instead of gelatinous and too sweet, at least according to my tastes. Ja! I have been making this recipe for 20 years now! WOW, I can’t believe I said 20 years. It is inspired in a recipe from Gourmet Magazine April 1990. The original recipe calls for…
Tag: baking
Ensaimada de Mallorca
In a few weeks I will be attending a family reunion of the Arbona side of the family. My great-grandfather came to Puerto Rico from Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands (Spain) in the late 1800’s. In short, he went back, got married, had his children and they returned to Puerto Rico due to the Spanish…
Blueberry Pound Cake
A pound cake is a kind of cake which is made of 1 pound of each of the following ingredients: eggs, flour, butter and sugar. However, there are many variations, substitutions and additions to this type of cake and the quantities are often varied to fit the baking mold you are going to use. For…
Almond Mantecaditos
As a young girl my grandmother Ita would make Mantecaditos for me every time she came to visit from Ponce, the southern part of the island. I learned to make her recipe, a variation of Carmen Aboy Valdejully’s cookbook Cocina Criolla. Ita would alter the recipe and substitute vanilla for the almond extract and place…
Panetela de Guayaba (Guava Torte, Masareal)
This torte is a traditional dessert in Puerto Rico and Cuba. In Puerto Rico its called Panetela de Guayaba and in Cuba its called Masareal. I have tried many homemade as well as commercial versions, but I have found no comparison to this recipe. I believe the key is the melted butter. Many recipes…
Vanilla Flan (Flan de Vainilla)
We inherited flans from many cultural influences. Back in Roman times people would make savory flans from the surplus of eggs and other ingredients in their “pantry” (spices, spinach, honey, eel, etc.). Centuries later in Spain and France, sweet flans started to flourish with caramel syrup as well as with other spices and nuts like…
Bittersweet Brownies
Bittersweet chocolate is a form of sweetened chocolate that does not have milk in any way shape or form. It is mainly chocolate liquor, sugar,cocoa butter and vanilla. Often, lecithin is added as an emulsifying agent. In the United States of America the Food and Drug Administration requires that bittersweet chocolate has at least 35% chocolate…
Empanada Gallega
According to Foodimentary @ Twitter, April 8 was the National Empanada Day. So immediately I took out the recipe journal my Aunt Toñita gave me as a present a few weeks ago with her favorite recipes in which she included my grandmother’s Empanada Gallega recipe and got busy in the kitchen. Empanada means to coat…
Quiche Alsacienne
The word quiche derives from the german word “kuchen” which means cake. The french of the Lorraine region adapted the original german version “Lothringer Speckkuchen” of a bread pie with eggs, cream and bacon by later adding gruyere cheese and a pastry crust to make the modern Quiche Lorraine. I was given an onion and cheese…
Nieves' Lemon Bread
For this family recipe I had to travel a long way to get it. One of those dishes that is one person’s trademark and she makes it without a written recipe. When you ask for the recipe he/she lists the ingredients but cannot tell you the exact amounts… what a nightmare! Ja, ja! It is…