Cinnamon Cupcakes with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

It is a long sunny weekend and I thought I'd be baking till sunset but I've had an annoying headache for the last 3 days, I guess I can say it is migraine by now, because it is constant. I take a pill and it goes away for 2 hours , then back again, and so on...
I haven't been very productive, but today's my friend's birthday and I wanted to do something for her. We are celebrating!!!!!
It had to be nothing too complicated but more importantly that would take too long, pill only lasts 2 hours.

The recipe is from Cupcakes from Marabout. It is called "le presque quatre-quart" . I adapt it a little bit and instead of adding vanilla, I added cinamon.
45 g milk
3 eggs
2 tbsp cinamon
170 g flour
150 g sugar -  Nex time I'll use less sugar, for me they are a bit too sweet.
150 g unsalted butter
3/4 baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven at 170 C
Mix wet ingredients and set aside.
In a mixer bowl, add all dry ingredients and mix till they are well combined. Add the butter and half of the wet ingredients.  Mix slowly, andd other half of wet ingredients and mix to maximum speed for one minute. Fill in the cupcakes.
Bake for 25 or 30 minutes or check with a knife until it is dry. Mine took 20 minutes.

Cream Cheese feeling
From the same book I adapted a little bit the recipe. I found it was too sweet for my taste.
So , I use 300 g of cream cheese and 120 g of butter plus 120 g of icing sugar - instead of 400 g.
Basically, you cream the cream cheese and butter and then add the sugar ,beat it very well for at least 5 to 7 minutes; You can add vanilla 1 tsp.  I didn't add because I was going to drizzle caramel on top

Time to go and take another pill...

Lemon Meringue tart recipe

I didn't have time to add the recipe of the Lemon meringue tarts I made this weekend. The feedback was rather positive, Mr. D thought it had too much lemon but other than that it tasted good.  The recipe comes from the book "Atelier Tartes" by Catherine Kluger. One recipe can make one tart for a 20 cm mold.

The dough
200 g flour
80 g sugar cero
25 g almonds powder
120 g unsalty cold butter cut in cubes
1 egg

Mix all dry ingredients, add the butter. You can mix all in the robot or if you like working with your hands like I do, go for it and make it look like sand. Do not over work it though and make the dough elastic. This is not that type of dough. Once you get the right consistency, add the egg to bind all. Wrap it in a plastic film and let it rest in the refrigerator for 1 hour min.
Then , roll it out and cover your greased mold (s) with the dough and make little holes with a fork.  Again, place it in the refrigerator to rest, another 30 min minimum! Take them out and bake for 20 min into a 160 C oven.

Lemon Curd
75 g of melted butter

juice of 4 lemons
120 g sugar
3 eggs
1 spoon corn flour
the zest of 2 lemons

Mix eggs, sugar and corn flour. Add this to the melted butter mixing continously. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest. Bring almost to boil -fremir in French and keep stirring with a espatula until it thickens. BE PATIENT , it might take a while and do not stop stirring.
Pour the mix over the tart and let it cool for 3 hours at room temperature, once cold place in the refrigerator for 3 hours minimum.
You can now dress the tart with the meringue and place it under your oven gril till colored.

Meringue
120 g sugar - I think it is better to use sugar cero
2 egg whites
2 drops of lemon juice
 

Lemon meringue tarts

I've had with me a couple of books I borrowed from the library at my pastry school. One of them is rather ambitions, I admit, Macaron from Pierre Hermé, and the other is a book about salty and sweet tarts. As you can see, I went for the second book. I think I need more time to recover from my last bad experiences with macarons.

Oh well, so here I come with the preparation for the tarts, I started preparing the dough with almonds , leaving it to rest enough time in the refrigerator without working it too much, placing it in the individual tart molds and letting it rest again for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator before baking the crusts shells at 160 C. After all the precautions taken, I was quite dissapointed to see my crusts shrank. I will certainly try the-great-unshrinkable-sweet-tart-shell by Smitten Kitchen.

I also had a nice overall view of how heat works in my oven. I placed the 18 mini tarts in the oven, and there were 2 or 3 quite dark ones compared to the rest!

Next step, the lemon curd. I am preparing the lemon curd and oh my, what a delicious citrious heavenly cream. I think I can just eat it up like that. Thanksfully, I am reminded that it is lunch time so behave Mrs.! I managed to place the lemon curd in the tarts... Now next step the meringue!

The meringue, the recipe called for plain sugar, not impalpable, and I should have listened to my instint that said " Not use that one", use the sucre cero! Oh well, that's what it means to try out a recipe. Now  I know. The result was good, tasty. I mean what's wrong with meringe but the consistency was a bit granular. I did use this meringue and decorate my tarts. 

 

And then a little bit on the grill. 

and the best part is to eat them .... provecho