Lex Culinaria

The World's Best Cookies!!!

I have a strange collection of little booklet-style cookbooks. Some are from the 40's or 50's. Some are the kind of cookbook that you could write away for off the back of a packet of baking soda. Some were clearly made and sold as a fund raiser for local community or church groups. In all, I'd say I have somewhere around 20 of these little gems. One of them is from the 1995 graduating class fund raiser from my law school. It contains, not just cheesy law-school humour, but cheesy, college student recipes in spades. Some are good. A lot of them use offensive amounts of mayonnaise or Velveeta. But one of the recipes has served as the basis for 12 years of amazing chocolate chip cookies for me.

In 12 years, I don't know that I've managed to stick to the recipe entirely even once, but the results have always been stellar. The trick, in my opinion, is the ground oatmeal which replaces half the flour. It makes for a cookie that tastes like a marriage between an chewy oatmeal cookie and a chocolate chip cookie. Perfect!

The current incarnation looks something like this:

• 1 cup butter, soft
• 1/4 cup vanilla sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats (whizzed into flour in your blender)
• a splash of milk
• 1 heaping cup walnuts
• 12 oz bag chocolate chips (minus a few chips to eat while you're cooking)
• 1 cup dried cherries

Whip butter and sugars together on high in a stand mixer until fluffy, about 3-5 minutes. mix in eggs and vanilla. Sift together salt, cinnamon, flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and mix in to the butter mixture. If the dough is a little stiff (this will depend on the size of your eggs and the state of your brown sugar) add a little splash (maybe a tablespoon or two) of milk. Mix in the nuts, chocolate and cherries.

Drop by heaping teaspoons full onto a cookie sheet and bake in a 350F oven for approximately 10 minutes - until the edges of the cookies begin to turn a golden brown colour. Remove from oven and let cool on sheets for a few minutes before transferring to cooling racks.

Chocolate and Cinnamon Ice Cream

Finally, as promised much much earlier...the recipe for chocolate & cinnamon ice cream! I have made this 3 more times since my original mention of it (and promise to post soon) in May, mere days before the baby arrived. Maybe those three batches are what accounts for his rapid weight gain... not because he's been eating the ice cream, but because I have. That is, if I can get to the ice cream before my husband does...

This reminds me of Mexican hot chocolate, but nice and creamy and cool. Hardly surprising given the cinnamon. I swear you'll never make another chocolate ice cream recipe again.

• 750 ml (3 cups) whole milk
• 1 cup vanilla sugar
• 2 whole eggs
• 3/4 cup dark dutch process cocoa
• 1.5 - 2 tablespoons cinnamon (depending on the freshness/ strength of your cinnamon)
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup creme de cacao

combine first 5 ingredients in a heavy bottomed saucepan and blend vigorously with a high speed immersion blender until smooth and frothy. Heat gently over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until hot and thickened - about 20 minutes. If it curdles slightly, re-blend with the immersion blender. Remove from heat and allow to cool  for about 10 minutes. Stir in the buttermilk, transfer to a bowl and refrigerate for one hour. After one hour, blend in the creme de cacao.

Process in your ice cream maker according to directions.

Saturday afternoon baking

It really feels like spring might finally be here. I can't wait for all the juicy berries and fruit of summer. In the meantime, it seems I've had my fill of apples and pears. And despite the grim news last month about the citrus crop in California, I sure haven't noticed a whole bunch of difference in the quality or price of citrus here. I can still get great big ruby red grapefruit and bags of lemons for the usual price. In fact, since I'd virtually without fail choose citrus over apples, I'm pretty happy to hang on until summer's bounty starts to appear.

Over the last couple weeks I've made My grandma's lemon sponge pudding quite a lot - I've made it with just lemons, lemon and lime and I made a red grapefruit one too (Use lots more zest and juice if you're using grapefruit as the taste is milder)! Seems like I'm not the only one that's been enjoying this recipe. I got a few emails recently from a lovely lady who runs a catering business in the UK who made the lemon sponge pudding for a client and got rave reviews. I'll have to remember to tell my Gram (who just turned 90 a few weeks ago. Happy Birthday Gram!)

For some reason this weekend (maybe the touch of spring?) I felt like baking and, although I LOVE chocolate, I really wanted something fresher and crisper tasting. After perusing the gourmet magazine collection at the local grocery store, and feeling not even remotely inspired, I decided that a citrus-y layer cake was in order. Just the thing to celebrate the first warm-melty days of spring.

This cake is REALLY lemony. We keep our cakes in the cupboard, not having a cake dome, and having 2 cats. Every time I open the cupboard I am greeted by a waft of sweet lemon fragrance. Pure heaven. So far, the cake has been around for almost 36 hours and we have only managed to scarf down 1/3 of it, which is pretty restrained for us.... The icing I used is a variation on another icing I have done. I really prefer it to traditional icing recipes which I find far too buttery and cloying. I imagine you could adapt this to just about any flavour as the recipe is essentially equal volumes whipped butter and cold custard. It's incredibly creamy without being greasy or sugary. Is spreads like a dream and sets up nicely. Due to the milk content it really does need to be refrigerated.

Citrus layer cake with lavender and vanilla icing

For the cake

3 Tablespoons citrus zest ( I used 2 lemons and one grapefruit - you could use 4 lemons, or 2 lemons and 2 oranges... whatever really)

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2.5 cups flour

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons citrus juice (Again, I used 2 lemons and one grapefruit)

1/3 cup soft butter

1/2 cup milk

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

pinch salt

Grease and flour 2 8-inch round pans. Preheat oven to 375F.

Cream together zest, sugar and eggs. Beat on high speed. Add butter and continue to beat for several minutes. Beat in citrus juice. Beat in milk. Sift dry ingredients together. Beat until just combined.

Spread batter (which will be on the thicker side of cake batter) evenly into 2 pans. Bake at 375F for 20-23 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Cool in pans for 15 minutes and then remove to plates to continue cooling. I put mine in the freezer for 10 or 15 minutes to completely cool as I can't stand waiting!

For the Icing

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vanilla sugar

2 Tablespoons flour

1 egg

1 teaspoon lavender

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup butter

1 teaspoon lemon zest (split in two 1/2 teaspoon portions)

1/3 cup icing sugar

In a small saucepan combine milk, sugar, flour and egg. Beat with an immersion blender until completely blended and smooth. Place saucepan over medium-high and add lavender. Heat for 5 minutes. Strain out lavender. Return to heat, whisking frequently until mixture starts to bubble vigorously and thicken. Continue to cook, whisking continuously for a further 90 seconds. Remove from heat and set saucepan in a cool water bath.

In your stand mixer, whip butter for 5 or more minutes until very pale and fluffy.

While butter is whipping, whisk custard in water bath to cool. Once custard is cool to the touch, whisk in vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest.

While the mixer is running, dollop spoonfuls of the custard into the whipped butter. When it is all incorporated, whip in icing sugar.

Divide frosting into 2 portions.

Use one portion to sandwich between the layers, and the second portion to spread on top. Sprinkle top of icing with reserved lemon zest.

Slice & serve.

Mini Lemon and Cream Tarts

More so than any other occasion during the year, Valentines day is an essentially discriminatory holiday....against people who don't LOVE chocolate that is. It's also the only occasion, aside from birthdays or anniversaries that a couple is likely to splash out on a nice meal and a special restaurant. And so they should. Despite my misgivings bout the commercial roots of Valentines day, there's something really nice about celebrating your love and commitment to your partner with a beautiful meal and a nice bottle of wine. Who cares if everyone else is doing it too!

Unfortunately, for those of us who prefer to give chocolate a miss at the end of a meal, at this time of year every restaurant seems to haul out the triple chocolate mousse cakes and molten chocolate cakes and bitter chocolate tarts for dessert. What if you or your partner (like mine) are more of a fruit dessert kind of person? It'd be nice to have something special and decadent all your own don't you think? besides, after a rich meal and some gorgeous wine, chocolate might be a bit heavy, especially if you've got activities planned for later, if you know what I mean...

Why not save the desert for your return home? These gorgeous little lemon tarts are sweet and tangy and not cloying or heavy the way chocolate deserts can be. You can make them ahead of time and pull them out of the fridge when needed. The little mound of puffy cream on top and the brilliant red berries dress it up for the occasion very nicely. All the better if you've got a little bit of food grade glitter!

No need for a professional pastry chef either. If you're not keen on making the pastry yourself, buy some of those tiny pre-made tartlet shells, or pop pre-made pastry into a mini muffin tin. If you are keen to make your own pastry any shortcrust or patee sucree will do, bearing in mind that a patee sucree will result in a sweeter finished product. I used plain shortcrust (premade from the freezer section, gasp!).

This recipe makes about a dozen small tarts, or you could save the extra lemon curd to serve over angel food cake, fill a layer cake, plop on a Pavlova or dip fruit slices in. Or, if you live in my house, you might just keep it in a jar in the fridge and slowly (or quickly) eat it spoonful by spoonful over the course of a few days. This curd recipe is also more forgiving, easier and less rich than traditional curd recipes as it replaces some of the yolks with whole egg and cooks in less steps, but turns out beautifully creamy nonetheless. Also, because I have a very fine grater, sometimes I don't strain the zest out of the curd, but if your grater produces coarser zest, you may want to, just make sure you do it while your curd is quite hot.

Mini lemon and cream tartlets

• 12 blind-baked mini tart shells in a pan (you could blind bake these ahead of time and premake the filling and topping and then all you have to do is spend a few minutes assembling on the night!)
• 375 ml fresh lemon juice (or part lemon ad part lime)
• 4 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 egg yolks plus 3 whole large eggs
• 1/4 cup butter, soft
• 3/4 cup whipping cream
• 1.5 tablespoons vanilla sugar
• small punnet ripe raspberries
• food-grade glitter (available at cake decorating shops) or icing sugar for dusting.

Beat lemon juice, zest, sugar, and eggs together very well using an immersion blender, or standard blender on the highest setting.

Heat over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisking occasionally. When mixture starts to get hot, whisk in the butter. Continue whisking until mixture thickens significantly to the consistency of warm custard. Remove from heat and strain through a fine mesh sieve to remove the larger bits of zest. Chill slightly by pressing cling wrap to the surface to prevent a skin from forming.

While curd is still warm, pour into tartlet shells. Save any extra in a jar in the fridge.

Refrigerate filled shells until curd is firm.

Whip the cream and vanilla sugar together.

Top each filled tart with a dollop of whipped cream and a few berries. Immediately before serving, dust with food grade glitter or icing sugar.

Enjoy the love!

Xmas Baking#3: Basil and Cinnamon Dark Chocolate truffles

I love making chocolate truffles. They sound pretty hard and are really tasty, but are about the easiest thing to make. Especially if you're not super anal about making cute little round balls, but opt for what I think is a more modern (and easier) presentation - cubes. I flavoured these by infusing the cream with cinnamon and basil, but your options are really limitless - Earl Grey tea, orange, lemon, chai spice, vanilla bean, chili powder, ginger..... see what I mean about impressive?

Seriously, these will take you mere minutes to make (if you don't count the slow simmering of the cream).

• 250ml (8 oz) whipping cream
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1/2 (sort of packed) cup bruised fresh basil leaves
• 2 x 2 inch pieces thick cinnamon bark (look in a South Asian grocer for this)
• 800 grams chopped dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Simmer the cream and water together with the basil and cinnamon covered, over medium-low heat for 20 minutes. Remove the cinnamon bark. Use an immersion blender to roughly chop the basil into the cream using 2 or 3 short bursts. Continue to simmer, uncovered, for 5 more minutes. Strain the basil bits out of the cream and use two large spoons, nested together, to squeeze all the liquid out of the basil leaves back into the cream. Discard the basil leaves.

Transfer the cream to the top of a double boiler and add the chocolate. Melt the chocolate and cream together, stirring occasionally, over boiling water. Meanwhile, line an large 4" by 8 " loaf pan with cling wrap.

When chocolate and cream are fully melted, pour the mixture into the lined pan, taking care that the plastic doesn't flop over into the hot chocolate. The best way to do this is to tape the edges of the plastic to the sides of the pan. The chocolate should cover the bottom of the pan to a depth of about 1 1/2 centimetres.

Refrigerate the pan for an hour.

Mix granulated sugar and powdered cinnamon together in a shallow bowl and set aside. Using a knife dipped in hot water and dried, cut the chocolate into small cubes about 1 to 1 1/2 centimetres. You'll have to reheat and re dry the knife every 2 or 3 cuts. Roll each cube in the cinnamon sugar.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Makes about 70 small cubes.

Xmas Baking #2: Pistachio, Cranberry and White Chocolate bikkies

I love the way that cranberries and pistachios look together in Christmas baking. These cookies started out in my mind, not as cookies, but as a white chocolate cranberry & pistachio bark. Then I remembered how cloyingly sweet white chocolate can be, and settled on a lesser amount of it in these cookies. Even for someone who usually doesn't appreciate the sweetness of white chocolate, I really love these cookies. The dough makes for quite a crispy cookie, even when baked until only just golden on the bottom. They keep really well in a sealed jar (if they last long enough for that to matter) and would make a great present, wrapped up in pretty white paper with cranberry coloured ribbon.

• 175 grams (6 oz) butter
• 1 cup vanilla sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons grated orange rind
• 1/2 teaspoon dried ground vanilla bean
• 250 grams (2 1/4 cups) flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 100 grams (approx 1/2 to 3/4 cup) each dried cranberries, chopped pistachios and chopped white chocolate

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a stand mixer, set on high, beat sugar and butter together until pale. Add in orange rind, egg and vanilla bean powder and beat on high for 2 minutes more. Sift flour and baking powder together and combine with butter mixture. Stir in chocolate nuts and cranberries.

If you're feeling lazy, or are going with the "instant gratification theme", roll dough into balls, place on cookie sheet with about 4 cm (1.5 inches) between and flatten each ball slightly with the bottom of a glass. 

If you're after maximum effect and can stand to wait at least 8 hours for your cookies - roll the dough into 2 logs, wrap in waxed paper and freeze them for 8 hours or overnight. Then use a very sharp knife to slice the frozen dough into cookies. The dough must be frozen for this to work! You'll find that the knife slices beautifully through the cranberries and pistachios to give a gorgeous green and red cross section! I am warning you, if you try to do this with unfrozen dough, you'll end up with a mess as the nuts will tear through the dough.

Bake at 350F for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the bottoms of the cookies start to turn golden brown.

Remove cookies to cooling rack.

Makes 48 to 60 cookies.

Spiced Apple Sponge with Demerara Caramel

It seems that we've skipped right over Autumn and headed straight from summer into the deep freeze of winter. In the late-September week that Cakes and I were away, all the leaves fell off the trees on our street with a great "WHOOOOMPH!". Well, at least that's what I reckon it would have sounded like if we'd been around to hear it. And now here we are in winter. There's been a fair bit of snow on the ground for over a week now. It's not the come-and-go melty kind of snow. It looks and feels like it's here for the duration. The sidewalks are slippery. There's frost on the windows of my car in the mornings. The entryway in the back of the house is a permanent puddle from the snowy shoes. But the surest sign that winter is indeed upon us? My cooking and eating preferences have made a distinct shift away from fresh and green to stewy, saucy, rich and spiced. 

Since September and October were so unbelievably busy for me, I kind of feel like a stranger in my own kitchen. We've been eating way too much takeout and prepackaged foods, all terribly salty and fatty and not very good. But now, as the homebody season of winter gets into full swing, I swear that's going to change. This afternoon I felt like something sticky and cinnamony and sweet. Something that would fill the house with the warmth of the oven and the smell of baking. And this recipe is just what the doctor ordered. I made it with a simple sponge cake, but I have the feeling that it would be even nicer with a tender and dense vanilla pudding cake, as the sponge cake is less moist than a regular cake.

Spiced Apple Sponge with Demerara Caramel

• 1 Tablespoon softened butter
• 2 large organic apples, cored and sliced
• 2 Tablespoons yellow, brown or demerara sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup vanilla sugar
• 2/3 cup cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1 cup cream
• 1 cup demerara sugar
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1 Tablespoon apple brandy

Preheat oven to 370F. Grease bottom and sides of a 9" springform pan with the tablespoon of soft butter. Layer apple slices in the bottom and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon.  In a stand mixer whip eggs and vanilla sugar on high for 8 to 10 minutes, or until pale, fluffy and greatly increased in volume. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and ginger. Fold flour mixture into eggs one third at a time. Fold in melted butter. Pour batter into pan and bake in the centre of the oven for 20 to 22 minutes, or until sides start to come away from the pan and the top springs back when touched lightly. Run a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake and invert onto a cake stand to cool.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine cream, sugar and vanilla pod, using the tip of a knife to scrape out the seeds into the cream. Stir mixture until sugar dissolves completely. Increase heat to 3/4 and bring to a rolling simmer. Allow to simmer for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the caramel starts to thicken visibly. Remove from heat. Use a fork to fish out the vanilla pod. Stir the brandy into the caramel. Pour caramel over the cake. Serve warm.

Winemakers Cake

It wasn't until last year that I realised that grapes are actually meant to taste like...well..grapes! I always assumed that Welch's added fake grape taste to their juice as I had never tasted a grape with that flavour. Last year, about this time, I bought some Okanagan grown grapes at the Strathcona Farmer's Market and was blown away. They weren't the same vaguely sweet and watery tasting grapes that I had known all my life. They were packed full of crazy mouthwatering grapey flavour. I ate the whole carton inside of a day. I went back to the market the following week, but they were gone.

I pined for those grapes and wondered if I would ever have the experience again.

I'm happy to report that in the last two weeks I've had the pleasure of eating 3 more cartons of these grapes and, even better, they are available at regular grocery stores! So I am not restricted to a window of 6 hours on a Saturday to procure the week's supply!

I love these grapes so much I wanted them to be the central feature for our dessert when we had dinner guests last week. I pondered at great length about the appropriate treatment for them and finally settled on this recipe from Epicurious.com, which I have reproduced below for convenience, along with my changes (more grapes!!!).

This is not an overly sweet cake, which suite the grapes well and suits my maturing palate quite well too. I find I prefer my deserts to be less cloying and sweet than I did when I was younger.

Try to use grapes that are seedless or which have very small seeds. I've managed to purchase both seeded and unseeded varieties, so you night want to double check in the grocery store before you purchase.

This recipe would work equally well with cherries or berries of one kind or another. It's kind of like a clafouti but it's more cakey than custardy. Maybe closer to a coffee cake in texture, and incredibly moist.

• Butter and flour for greasing the cake pan
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 135 g (2/3 cup) white sugar
• 60 g (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) light olive oil
• 80 ml (1/3 cup) light cream 
• 5 ml (1 teaspoon) pure vanilla extract
• 15 ml (1Tablespoon) Cointreau or Grand Marnier
• 200 g (1 1/2 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 5 ml (1 teaspoon) baking powder
• A pinch of sea salt
• Grated zest of 1 lemon
• 500 g (2 to 2.5 cups) small purple or blue grapes
• whipped cream for garnish

Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C.

Butter and flour a 9"/23cm springform pan.

Using an electric whisk or mixer, whisk eggs and sugar until thick and pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the butter, oil, milk, vanilla extract,and cointreau and mix until blended.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest in a large bowl. Spoon the mixture into the bowl of batter and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly blended.

Stir about 3/4 of the grapes into the batter. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the top with a spatula.

Place the pan in the centre of the oven. Bake for 15 minutes, then sprinkle the top of the cake with remaining grapes. Bake until the top is a deep golden brown and the cake feels quite firm when pressed with a fingertip, about 40 minutes more, for a total baking time of 55 minutes. Remove to rack to cool. Run a knife along the sides of the pan to loosen. Release and remove the side of the springform pan, leaving the cake on the pan base. Serve at room temperature, cut into thin slices and topped with gently sweetened whipped heavy cream.

Lemon Basil and Palm Sugar Ice Cream

I love this time of late summer. I have so many good things growing in my garden and what I don't grow myself is available fresh and flavourful from practically anywhere: punnet of raspberries, cobs of corn with their dangling green silk, juicy ripe peaches that always manage to drip juice down my chin, bowls and bowls of gorgeous yellow and red cherries, tomatoes in every shape and colour and beans and peas and lettuce. Oh my. I have such trouble deciding what to make and what to eat and what to write about first. I've decided to solve my own little dilemma by doing what my mother would never let me do as a child and that's have at the desert first.

Know you all know about the crazy amount of basil growing in my garden. I trimmed it back heartily last week when I made fresh pesto, and this week, it was as big and bushy as ever so I had to find more stuff to do with it. I'm never one to apply limits and restrictions on what should or should not be done with particular ingredients. At least I hope that's the sort of cook I am, although I suppose everyone has their own biases and preconceptions about all sorts of stuff so I'm sure there I must have some culinary blind spots. Thankfully the use of basil to make ice cream is not one of them. otherwise I would never have tried this and found out how bloody much I love it!

On a very basic level there are two methods for making ice cream: French style, and Philadelphia Style. The first is very rich and silky and creamy and also has about as much fat as a good dose of hollandaise! That's because it's made with cream and quite a lot of egg yolks. While I have made French style ice cream in the past and I love it, it's a bit too heavy to eat as much as you (okay, I) want so I opted to make Philadelphia style instead, which is made with just milk (or cream) and sugar. If you're more of a creamy French style fan, you could easily adapt this for use with a basic french style ice cream recipe.

This ice cream is lemony in a green sort of way. It's fresh and herby tasting with just the barest hint of bite that you get with lots of fresh basil. If you want a bit more bite, try substituting part of the lemon basil with Thai basil. You could also make a fully Thai version by using Thai basil and lemongrass instead of lemon basil and lemon. And while you're at it, substitute coconut milk for some of the cream or milk. Also, I used palm sugar instead of regular white sugar. The palm sugar has a distinctive taste all its own. Not quite like brown sugar, but not exactly unlike it either. It's also a very Thai ingredient and its subtle, complex and sweet flavour goes beautifully with the lemon basil and zest.

Lemon Basil and Palm Sugar Ice Cream

(makes 4 cups)

• 2 cups light cream
• 1 + 1/2 cups milk
• 75 grams palm sugar (about 3 disks, if you buy it in that form - it comes about 8 disks to a bag)
• 7 or 8 large sprigs very fresh lemon basil, stalks and all
• peel from 1/4 lemon (all traces of white pith pared away)

Simmer cream, milk and sugar together over low heat until sugar completely dissolves, after a couple of minutes in the hot milk, the sugar should break up pretty easily with a fork. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Add lemon and basil and simmer for 30 minutes more. Strain the herbs out and put the milk mixture int a cool bowl and refrigerate overnight or at least 4 hours.

Process in your ice cream maker. Serve with sugared basil leaves or candied lemon peel. Or both. Or neither.

Cherry and Lemon Creamcheese Tarts

Some time between this post and now, I fell off the diet wagon. I'm still 15 or 20 pounds heavier than I'd like to be and it shows no signs of falling off my butt all on its own. My real weakness is sweets. And creamy stuff. And sweet creamy stuff.

Plus, it's been like 33 degrees for weeks now and when it's that hot I really am not keen on eating heavy stuff or heating up the house to bake rich goodies.

So tonight, I called upon an old trick to lighten up desserts - making little tart shells out of phyllo dough and came up with this beauty, a variation on a much fattier dessert I have been known to make using a rich pate sable crust and full fat cream, that'll see us through summer. Or at least the next couple of weeks while we use up the extra tart shells I made.

You could use any kind of berry or fruit in place of the cherries, although I really think the lemon cream goes very well with the cherries. You could substitute lime or orange or grapefruit peel. I think lime cream would go very nicely with strawberries and orange might be nice with raspberry. If (unlike me) you're not feeling like there's more of you than there should be, you could substitute creamier ingredients and real pastry, although the low fat version is definitely nice and light for this hot summer weather, not just for dieters.

I must also take a moment to say that several gadgets I use in preparing this recipe are a must-have in my kitchen: my spring loaded olive/cherry pitter ($15), my air-pump oil sprayer ($4), and my mini chopper (it's actually an attachment for my kitchenaid immersion blender). I use those three things all the time in my kitchen.

Cherry & Lemon Creamcheese Tartlets: Serves 6

• 4 sheets phyllo dough
• sugar
• spray-on canola oil
• (185 ml) 3/4 cup 1% milk
• peel of 1/2 lemon
• 8gm (1/2 envelope) gelatin
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) low fat cream cheese, cold
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) sour cream, cold
• 85 ml (1/3 cup) Splenda or other sweetener
• 2.5 ml (1/2 teaspoon) vanilla
• 1 cup cherries, pitted and sliced in half

Layer the 4 sheets of phyllo dough together spraying oil and sprinkling 1 to 2 teaspoons of oil between each layer. Cut stack of sheets into squares a little larger than your tart tins or muffin cups. Push each square of dough into a tin or muffin cup. Bake in a 400F oven for 8 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside to cool. If you have extras, if if you make the shells ahead of time, you can store them, once cool, in an airtight container.

Simmer milk with lemon peel and gelatin on the stove over medium heat for 10 minutes or until reduced to 1/2 cup and the gelatin is dissolved. Strain out the peel. Puree milk and cream cheese until smooth. Add vanilla, Splenda and sour cream and process again. Refrigerate for 1/2 to 1 +1/2 hours until mixture is cold and somewhat set like a very thick cream or a custard. If I'm in a hurry, I chill mine in the freezer, stirring once every 10 minutes.

Spoon mixture into 6 tart shells and top with cherries.

Each tart is 3 WW points or 165 calories each