Alice's Lemon Basil Cookie Sandwiches

780 g flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
2 C butter, room temp

4 oz cream cheese, room temp
400 g sugar
2 eggs
1 T vanilla extract
1 t lemon extract

3 T finely chopped fresh basil
2 T lemon zest

44 g warm water

23 g fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 t oil free vanilla extract
26 g meringue powder
450 g powdered sugar, sifted
15 g or 1 T light corn syrup

1 C butter, room temp
540 g powdered sugar, sifted
2 T heavy cream
1/8 salt, finely ground
2 1/2 T lemon juice
1 T lemon zest

Sep 30: Make Cookie Dough
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, powder, and salt.
In a stand mixer, cream butter, cream cheese, and sugar.

Beat in eggs, extracts, basil, and zest.
Incorporate dry ingredients just until combined.
Divide dough into two discs.
Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let chill at least 4 hours.
Roll dough onto a floured surface to a quarter inch.

Oct 01: Make Royal Icing & Shape Dough
Combine warm water, lemon juice, and vanilla extract.
Weigh meringue powder into stand mixer bowl.
Pour liquid into meringue powder.
Mix on medium low for 1 min, or until homogenous and frothy.
Add sifted sugar and mix until combined, still on medium low.
Turn speed to medium high and whip 3 mins.
Royal icing should be thick and hold stiff peaks.
Stir in corn syrup.

Cover and let rest overnight.

Roll dough to 1/4" in four batches.
Cut and freeze cookies using a 2" biscuit cutter.
Can re-roll leftovers; will yield 120 cookies.
Using a 1 3/4" circle cutter, score the tops of 60 cookies.
Freeze cookie dough overnight.

Oct 02: Bake Cookies & Flood

Once icing has rested, it's easier to remove air bubbles.
Stir about 2 T of royal icing with very little water.
Fit to a piping bag with a PME 1.5 tip.

Separately make a 20-25 second flooding icing.

Distribute into 2 silicone piping bottles.

Let flooding icing rest so bubbles rise to the top.

Arrange 20 frozen cookies per tray.
Bake from frozen at 325° convection bake for 11 mins.

Store unscored baked cookies in airtight container and set aside.

Gather the 60 cooled, scored, cookies.

Pipe borders around/outside scoring.
Store piping royal icing in an airtight container with a damp rag.

Flood bordered cookies, piping in center and scribing outwards.
Fill about 2/3rds the area with twice the height of the finished icing.
Piping in the center prevents border spillage.
More importantly, it raises the middles for "EAT ME."

Pop bubbles with scribe tool as needed and let cure overnight.

Oct 03: Decorate Top Cookies
Stamp and fill in unstamped areas by hand with food color pen.
Fit yesterday's piping royal icing with a nice fat Wilton 2 tip.

Pipe around icing joint.

Drop upside down into a bowl of sparkly sugar.

Using a very small spatula, adjust sparkles if necessary.

Cover loosely; can move on to next day's tasks if there's time.

Oct 04: Make Frosting, Sandwich Together, & Store

Beat butter until creamy.
Add sugar and heavy cream on low speed.
Dissolve salt into lemon juice.
Add lemon juice and zest.
Beat on high for 3 mins.

Generously pipe buttercream onto bottom cookies.

Gently top with decorated cookies.
Let buttercream crust for several hours.
Once stable, wrap tightly with seran wrap and store at room temp.
Allow a couple days for moisture to migrate from frosting into cookies.
(Maturing like macarons, even though sugar cookies are less spongy!)

Meringue Mushrooms

170 g whites, from 5-6 eggs
255 g toasted sugar

1/4 t salt

1/4 t cream of tartar

1 T vanilla extract

4 oz dark chocolate

Adjust oven racks to upper middle and lower middle positions.

Preheat oven to 225°.

Line two baking sheets with parchment.

Fit two large pastry bags with a 1/2" tip and a 1/4" tip.

Fashion a stand mixer bowl into a double boiler.

Combine whites, sugar, salt, and cream of tartar.

Stirring constantly, cook 8-10 mins or until 175°.

With a whisk attachment, whisk 5 mins or until glossy stiff peaks.

Reduce speed to medium low and add vanilla.
Pipe mushroom caps and stems with at least 1/2" space between.

Smoothing with a wet finger will both soften and deform the shape.
This makes them look more like mushrooms :)

Bake 3 hours or until meringues are dry and pull easily from parchment.

They will have turned a light beige.
Turn off heat and cool 4 hours or until room temperature inside oven.

Lightly dust each tray with a high-fat cocoa powder.

Use fingers to rub cocoa powder into caps and stems.

Match caps to stems.

Organize 2 trays filled with sugar.

Temper chocolate and put in a piping bag.

Nestle a mushroom cap into the sugar.

Flatten top of mushroom stem by twisting it into a flat surface.

Glue flattened stem onto cap with tempered chocolate (Wilton tip 5).

Let mushrooms cure upside down.

Mushrooms must be kept at cool room temp in a totally airtight container.

When ready to serve, us a foodsafe paintbrush to knock off excess sugar.

seriouseats

Toasted Sugar

4 lbs sugar

Adjust oven rack to center.

Preheat to 275° fan.

Pour sugar into 9x13 Pyrex.

Toast 1 hour or until sugar turns ivory.

Stir and continue roasting.

Stir every 30 mins to mix sugar and release steam.

Roast 2-5 hours.
Let cool to room temp, stirring occasionally.
Transfer to an airtight container.

Use in any recipe as a substitute for white sugar.

seriouseats

Note:

If the temps are too high, your sugar may start to become caramel.

The recommendation is to pour the toasted sugar off the top.

I think not; I stir it all together and then sift out my toasted sugar.

Then I take my pieces of hardened caramel.

Separately, I food process those into caramel granules.

Two products for the price of one!

Use this instead of sugar on crème brûlée or for any instant caramel.

Caramel granules liquify with heat better than toasted sugar.

Toasted sugar dissolves in water better than caramel granules.

LTK

Mimosa Punch

67 g sugar
7-8 inches cinnamon sticks
1/2 C water
1 quart orange juice
1/4 C orange liqueur
1/4 C brandy
1 liter sparkling water, chilled
1 750 ml bottle Champagne, chilled

Over high heat, combine sugar, cinnamon, and water.

Boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 15 mins.

Refrigerate until cool.
In a punch bowl, combine orange juice, liqueur, brandy, and syrup.

Stir in sparkling water and Champagne.

Note:
For non-alcoholic punch,

    replace liqueur, brandy, and Champagne with:

    2 C pineapple juice & 2 liters of ginger ale

Marmalade & Victorian Creams

Alice Liddell’s Own Orange Marmalade Recipe

Take 1 dozen Seville oranges, put them into a large pan of water, boil them gently 2 or 3 hours in two waters until quite tender.  Drain them.  Take out the pips only.  Slice the fruit very fine, boil well for half an hour with 2 lbs. of loaf sugar and half a pint of fresh water to every lb. of fruit.
The first boiling may be done the day previously.  If the marmalade is preferred bitter, the water that the oranges were first boiled in can be used instead of fresh water.*  1 dozen oranges will make 8 common 12 oz. jars of marmalade.  *Note: Fresh water was always used for Grandmama’s marmalade, which was what we liked.

Mary Jean St. Clair,

Alice’s granddaughter

Note: Seville oranges are a cross between pomelos and wild mandarin oranges.


Clotted Cream

1 C heavy cream
2 T powdered sugar
1/2 C sour cream, room temp

In a stand mixer, whip cream and sugar to stiff peaks.
Gently fold in sour cream and mix until very thick.
Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Will keep in the refrigerator up to 4 hours.
Serves 4-6.


Devonshire Cream

1 8-oz package cream cheese
1 t vanilla
3 T sugar
1/4 C whipping cream
1/4 C sour cream

In a stand mixer, beat cream cheese until fluffy.
Beat in all remaining ingredients until well blended.
Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Will keep in the refrigerator up to 4 hours.
Serves 4-6.

Taking tea with Alice by Dawn Hilton & Diane Sedo

Vampire's Kiss

3 parts vodka

2 parts chambord

1 part unsweetened cranberry juice

1 part grenadine

1 part (or less) fresh lemon juice

Optional grenadine & sugar rim

Mixing tin with ice, strain.

Cocktail smoker, 10 seconds.

Love Dip

16 oz cream cheese

1 clove garlic
1/4 bunch cilantro
1 T lemon juice
1/2 C chunky medium salsa
1 t dried tarragon
1/2 t salt

Soften and beat cream cheese.
Mince garlic and beat with cream cheese until light and fluffy.
Meanwhile, finely chop cilantro and juice lemon.
Fold in cilantro, lemon juice, salsa, tarragon, and salt.
Refrigerate before serving.

thekitchn