Week 2

A moment that was both happy and challenging for me this week was baking the lemon bars. I had never made nor eaten a lemon bar before, so I had no idea how it was supposed to look coming out of the oven, or what the texture of the final product was supposed to be. When putting the lemon bars in the oven, I was a bit wary because rather than the dough or batter consistencies I am used to, this was completely liquid. After about 30 minutes of baking, I pulled the bars out of the oven to see that they were still relatively liquid. The only thing the recipe told me was that it should be "jiggly", but there were no reference photos or other adjectives to help me out. I didn't know if it should be mostly solid with a little bit of movement, or mostly liquid with a little bit of solidity to it. I ended up putting it in for another 7 minutes until it baked a little more and relied on the next step (chilling it), which is where the recipe told me it would set it a little more. Overall, the lemon bars turned out fine. My family loved them! Though, I think they could have used a few more minutes in the oven.

Since I've tried a lot of new things this week, I have learned a lot of things as well. With the lemon bars, I learned how to infuse sugar with lemon, which I could easily apply to any other citrus fruit. I also learned how to make shortbread and that the dough is completely crumbly before you shape it into the pan. Similarly, I learned that mousse can be made dairy-free and isn't as complicated as I once believed.

I think I have worked toward my goals really well. This week I only tried recipes I had never tried before, and the lemon bar recipe was a real reach because I had never even eaten one before. I also think that the recipes I've been making are slightly more complicated than I'm used to, and I'm definitely being challenged.

One question I have surrounds the mousse that I made. Because I wanted to make it dairy-free, I used a recipe that called for canned coconut milk as the main ingredient in the base. When I was mixing the mousse on the stove, the batter seemed perfect and matched what the recipe told me it should look like. However, once I put it in the fridge and let it set overnight, I found that little bits of the coconut milk seemed to recondense together and, throughout the mousse, there were little chunks of the coconut substance that rests on the top part of canned coconut milk (that's the only way I know how to describe it). I'd love to try this recipe again and get it right because the flavor was really rich and the mousse itself was really creamy, but I don't know how to avoid the same problem.