recipe review | new recipe of the week: raw lemon pie macaroons from the tasty alternative

What do you do when life (or Trader Joe's) hands you a bag of lemons (that you purchased)? 

Well, first, you make lemon curd, because that stuff is straight-up delicious.  After that, the world is your oyster (also good with lemons, actually!).

At a recent Saturday work conference, I was stuck in a mid-morning rut: I didn't eat any of the bagels out at breakfast (paleo win!), but lunch was so far away and I wasn't interested in my own emergency snacks.  Thankfully, my dear friend Marisa's lunchbox had cooler snacks than mine, and I happily ate all of her vegan lemon macaroons.

Since I owe her some cookies and I have to use these lemons somehow, I hit up my best friend Google for some inspiration and found The Tasty Alternative's take on vegan lemon macaroons.

Visit the website for the recipe, but here is what it looked like before, during and after.  I halved the recipe and made everything exactly as called for with one exception.  I had no almond flour on hand, so I went with cashew meal, which is a coarser texture.

before: my food processor didn't dig the halved recipe- make a full version if you have a larger processor.

The hardest part about this recipe was getting my super-hot oven to dehydrate the macaroons without burning them. I had two challenges: one, I made the macaroons a little smaller than the recipe called for, which affects cooking time; and two, my aforementioned oven issues.  An hour on my lowest setting cooked the bottoms a little more than I would have liked, but didn't affect the flavor.






The boss take on this recipe? Delicious and worth another try for sure.  The only change I would make is adding more lemon flavor because of how much I've been loving lemon recently.  I have also come across quite a few recipes calling for a dehydrator recently; perhaps that will be my next kitchen investment.  Otherwise, I'll try to find a better balance of oven temperatures.  

You can see that they're a little more "done" than I would like.
Some of the golden brown color is from the use of cashew meal, but it's also from cooking a little too long.

recipe review | new recipe of the week: lemon curd (paleo)

One of my goals is to cook a new recipe every week.  I have my go-to recipes, as do we all, but I love exploring new flavors and cooking techniques. Check back weekly for a new Recipe of the Week! 

I am a lifelong, certified chocoholic, but I have been on a huge citrus kick lately.  Maybe it reminds me of the amazing lemon pastries I sampled in Paris, but it's probably a subconscious desire to prevent scurvy in this long Northeast winter.

After trying (read: finishing far too quickly) Trader Joe's Lemon Curd, I looked at the ingredient list and decided 2 things: 1. I could make this on my own, easily. 2. I could make this with higher-quality ingredients, avoiding refined sugar and processed oils.

With a little help from my best friend Google, I found this Easy Lemon Curd recipe from Savory Lotus and went to work.  The result was a smooth burst of citrus on my spoon.  It was so good, I could definitely eat it in an entire sitting.  I didn't, but let's see if it lasts through the day.

The finished product, minus my healthy quality control sample

This recipe was definitely easy to make, as promised, and I had the hardest time letting it cool and thicken overnight...that's how much I wanted to eat it!  You can click the link above for the recipe.  One thing I will say is: make sure you beat your eggs THOROUGHLY before adding to the mixture, and keep your heat on low as the recipe says.  I don't have any photos of the cooking process, but I definitely had to strain some scrambled egg whites out of my curd.  What can I say, I was just too excited to have lemon deliciousness in my life.

Easiest way of eating: by the jarful. I mean, spoonful.

While I have already copped to eating far too much of this on its own, this lemon curd would go great in baked goods, with fresh fruit, or maybe even stirred into some oatmeal.  This recipe will go into my "Definitely make again" queue, as well as the "Things I probably shouldn't know how to make" list.  Darn you, sweet tooth!

The bossyenglish Boss Take: definitely make this. Your scurvy-free self can thank me later!