It’s Tuesday so we’re baking with Dorie. This week’s recipe was chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles. If you’re a fan of custard… and a fan of lemon… this truly is a wonderful recipe. If you’re one of the TwD bakers who made this and thought it was “meh” and/or “too eggy”, then be sure to read on because I’d love love LOVE to tell you how I tweaked it for maximum lemon flavor. Come on… think about it… I am a huge fan of lemon so you can count on me to find a way to give this fabulous custard dish the most fabulously intense lemon flavor possible! {continued…}

I’m still trying to use up the bounty of lemons that’s come my way lately so the timing of this week’s recipe choice was near perfect.  After reading the “Problems and Questions” section on the Tuesdays with Dorie website, I was very concerned this recipe would be blah and have very little lemon flavor.  Knowing that would leave me wholly disappointed I thought about ways to kick this up a notch. Along with the lemon zest, some people added lemon extract or lemon oil but still thought the flavor was “meh”.  Others added a bit of lemon juice and agreed it was “meh”.  So taking a page from one of Dorie’s lemon tart recipes I decided to use pretty much the whole lemon.  I figured if I was going to zest the entire lemon for steeping in the milk,  I would squeeze in all the juice and add in all the pulp as well… even though I’d halved the recipe!  Not wanting to dramatically alter the texture (which retaining the lemon pulp surely would do), I decided to use my immersion blender to make the mixture smoooooooth :)  The recipe says to skim off the foam… and I thought I did but my mixture still had quite a bit of foam (no doubt the result of the immersion blender). Eh, no worries :)

After tinkering with the flavor, I followed the baking method and the directions for cooling/chilling… then I was completely rewarded with an amazing lemon custard just bursting with intense lemon flavor and absolutely no “eggy” taste! For a little extra touch, I topped it off with a bit of freshly whipped rose-flavored cream (though vanilla would’ve been just fine too, I mean with this one it’s all about the lemon!!).  Now some may question if the lemon pulp altered the texture?  Hmmm… perhaps… because it was more like a créme brulee (sans the burnt sugar top) than pudding but I loved it, loved it, loved it! Especially because it was sooooooooo lemony – yum!

If you’d like the recipe, please check Bridget’s blog or better yet get Dorie Greenspan’s book “Baking, From My Home To Yours”.  Also, take a moment and check out the results from the other TwD bakers.

Have a delicious day!

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