If I was a baking superhero, my one terrible weakness would be my incapacity to bake delicious stuff when I don’t feel like cooking. When such a scene is in play, the viewer usually ends up with some sad hunk of dough, dry and hard, containing too much cardamom. (I usually refrain from the photo and put up with Bastien’s wrath of discontent as we munch woefully away.)

This cake arose out of exactly such a situation, but rather than the sorry excuse for a descent dessert that I usually end up with, we were delighted to sink our teeth into exactly the contrary: a light and airy golden delicious slice of a serious and simple cake; perfect counterpart to a little cup of Italian espresso.

Don’t hesitate to make this cake even if you don’t feel like cooking. You can’t go wrong as long as you know how to separate egg yolks from whites and zest a lemon. It took me 20 minutes to prepare the cake, plus 35-40 minutes of cooking. If you have to grind your own almonds, you might add another 10 minutes to your preparation time.

Recipe for Spanish Almond Cake:

Preheat the oven to 160°C or 320°F.

Butter a cake pan and stick the almond slivers all over the inside of the pan, including up the sides.

Zest the lemon and slice very finely. In a small bowl, mix the almond powder and lemon zest.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until the yolks become almost white in color. Add the almond powder and mix.

In a medium bowl, using a clean whisk, whisk the egg whites with the salt until medium peaks form.

Add half of the egg whites to the almond mixture, stirring just enough to mix. Add the rest of the egg whites to the almond mixture, again, stirring by hand just enough to mix. Your dough should be light and airy. Pour it into your cake pan and bake for 35-40 minutes until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Bubbly from being whipped, and topped with a freshly picked strawberry

Simple and sweet is the best way to start spring.  Something about the first fruits and vegetables of the season is just so perfect, I hardly want to touch them. Serving them with a simple dessert is the next best thing to chomping them down en solo.

These almond milk ramekins are delicate, delicious, and light. I discovered this recipe in a little book called “30 recettes de verrines” by Sylvie Aït-Ali, who adds morello cherries to each ramekin, making for a lovely presentation. Painless and easy to make, and can be paired with so many things, especially fresh fruit and a sandie cookie, it quickly became one of my favorite desserts. These creamy almond bombs can even pass as a luxurious breakfast.

If you don’t find almond milk at the grocery store, you can probably find it at a health food or organic food shop. In France my favorite brand is Perl’Amande. The ingredients are spring water, 6.5% almonds, rice syrup, corn syrup, agave syrup and salt. It is quite thick and creamy. You could always use regular milk and a tsp of almond extract as well.

6 ramekins of pudding cool before going into the fridge

adapted recipe for almond cream pudding from the book “30 recettes de verrines by Sylvie Aït-Ali

• 500 ml almond milk
• 70 g sugar
• 3 tbsp corn starch
• fruit for adding to the ramekins or serving on the side

In a saucepan using a whisk, mix together the sugar and corn starch. Add the almond milk and heat at medium, stirring often, until the mixture becomes thick. This will only take a few minutes. If you want it to have big bubbles like in my photos, whip with a whisk just after the pudding has thickened.

Pour into 6 ramekins and allow to cool slightly before covering and placing in the fridge.

Enjoy!

As an American living in France, I have had many occasions to complain about the pizza here. Thin, poorly garnished, and expensive, minus one exception in Pézenas and two exceptions in the village of Aulnoye-Aymeries, one of which was stolen from my hands as I exited the restaurant. “Bon Appétît!!!” was all I could think of to yell at the hooded hooligan as he disappeared into an alley with my dinner. Needless to say, good pizza is hard to come by.

Though usually Bastien tries to stand up for his nation when I complain about it, he agrees with me on the pizza point, except for a fond memory of lunch in the suburbs of Paris during an internship in 2003… 

He would have lunch a few times a week at a small pizza shop. His order never changed: a cheeseless pizza composed of tomato sauce, prosciutto and cream. The pizza chef would reheat a slice of already cooked pizza with sauce, then top it with a slice of prosciutto and douse the slice in fresh cream. Bastien has evoked this pizza a number of times when thoughts of its fresh aromas would come haunting his memory, and so I tried to recreate it.

To my delight, this is a good pizza idea. I was skeptical about the missing cheese, but the cream makes up for it.

Here is my quick recipe. Homemade tomato sauce is by far better than canned. You can buy canned tomatoes, sprinkle them with sugar, salt, spices, herbs, garlic, cooked onion, cook at a low heat for at least 30 minutes, add a splash of olive oil…mmm!

A quick hint: This pizza is even better the second day. Re-heat the slices minus the prosciutto and cream. When they are warm and crunchy, top with prosciutto and cream.

Recipe for easy peasy pizza from the suburbs of Paris

• pizza dough: I used the recipe for the tarte au maroilles, replacing the butter with olive oil and milk with water
• tomato sauce with spices and herbs
• olive oil
• prosciutto
• heavy cream, crème fraîche, or even sour cream might do it

Tomato sauce: We make our own in the summer by boiling tomatoes and canning or freezing them. To make your own tasty sauce, add some salt, a spoonful of sugar, and any spices that you have… oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, tarragon, and even some coriander, turmeric, or other interesting spices. I even add a sprinkle of mint sometimes.

Heat oven to about 400°F.

Roll out dough into a circle, cover with sauce and sprinkle with olive oil. Bake in the bottom third of the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes, or until the dough looks done.

Slice into triangles, cover each with a thin slice of prosciutto, and add a dash of heavy cream or crème fraîche.

Bon appétît!

I welcome spring with insurmountable enthusiasm and a big sigh of relief.  This winter was cold and unsteady.

News of the natural disaster in a country that I love dearly is quite frightening. Luckily my friends are safe, but the situation is devastating. I think often of the generous people I met during my time in Japan, and now hope that everyone is doing his or her best in the face of such trying a situation.

My little house has no heating yet and the tile floors are synonymous with ice cubes. Just as spring began to sprout, and the day after Japan’s tsunami, four days of non-stop rains bombarded my region in the south of France and my very old leaky-roofed house. A part from staining some walls and ceiling, no harm was done.

The first part of our renovation began over a month ago, with the destruction of a very old dividing wall. Bastien and I have since learned about plumbing at midnight, electricity with no flashlight, building flat walls over bendy ones, and small house planning. We have just about made it through the toughest part, but cooking without a kitchen has led to the following casualties: 1 handmade terracotta olive oil bottle, 3 dinner plates, 1 Pyrex dish, 1 flower-pot, 1 watering-pot, and a few glasses. To my delight, the baby fig tree in the flower-pot survived without a scratch.

Though we try very hard not to break things, it happens. Initially startled and disappointed by each crash of ceramic and glass, I can only think of these things as trinkets when compared to what so many people are going through.

Keep those chins high and dry.

Tip for cooking asparagus:

If you haven’t got a special asparagus saucepan, and want a no-hassle solution to evenly cooking it, use a large open frying pan. Fill halfway with water and bring to a boil. Pose the asparagus stalks partially in the water with the tops resting on the side of the frying pan, as if they are in a hot tub. Cook for a minute or two before pushing the stalks the rest of the way into the water and finish boiling for another couple of minutes. Avoid over-cooking, taking them out of the water while they still have that fresh green color.

A little catching up to do… Napoleons with fondant glaze

Cooking is something of a fiasco at the moment. The Sour Plum is getting a new kitchen while the house gets a little renovation, which means that Bastien, Emmett the cat, and I are camping out in the bedroom. Quick meals are made and eaten at the foot of the bed because downstairs is a dusty mess. The dishes are done in the bathtub. Clothes, pots, and pans linger together in the closet. It’s quite topsy-turvy over here. I’m in renovation mode, and spend more time hammering at the walls than slicing fennel or beating eggs, though I did get to spend a few days working with passionate chefs in a restaurant kitchen last week, and a day out wine tasting in St. Chinian. I will tell about these later.

I posted a recipe for napoleons a while back, but never got around to giving you the recipe for the fondant glaze. This is a very easy recipe for fondant that I found in the excellent book Cookwise by Shirley O. Corriher.  If you like to know a little about the how and the why of cooking techniques, you would love this book. The recipe is originally from Helen Fletcher‘s book, The New Pastry Cook.

You must have a food processor and a candy thermometer to do this recipe, but it is very simple.

Working with fondant can be tricky at first, but it’s not difficult. This basic recipe will give you a thick white paste that can also be rolled out and draped over cakes for a smooth coating.

To use it to glaze a napoleon, reheat the fondant paste in a saucepan just to body temperature, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. You will probably need to add a few drops of water (or corn syrup) and stir very well until smooth. You can test the temperature by touching the fondant to your lip. It should be warm, not hot.

2 important things to avoid when preparing fondant for glaze:

1. Do not heat the fondant so much that it burns to the touch, or your napoleons will have a dull finish rather than a shiny one.

2. Do not add too much water (or corn syrup) to the fondant, or it will slide off the napoleon rather than setting.

The texture should be thicker than chocolate syrup, but pourable. Keep the layer very thin, or your napoleons will be too sweet!

Recipe for Basic Fondant as found in Cookwise by Shirley O. Corriher:

…

Note: You won’t need all of the fondant for the napoleon, but to make less, you need a very small food processor. The extra fondant stays good for a few months in the fridge. I’ve highlighted the basic process in bold.

Heat sugar, water and corn syrup to 238°F (114°C) in a heavy bottomed pan. Pour into a food processor fitted with the steel knife. Don’t mix yet!

Wash the candy thermometer well and reinsert into the syrup. Let the syrup cool undisturbed to 140°F (60°C). This should take about 30 minutes.

Remove the thermometer. (You can add some flavoring or color if you would like). Process for 2 to 3 minutes, until the syrup converts from a glassy syrup to an opaque paste. When thoroughly cooled, store sealed at room temperature for 24 hours, or refrigerate for later use. Refrigerated, fondant can stay good for months.

One good memory was a favorite cocktail among the group, the Buttery Nipple, composed of Bailey’s Irish Cream, Butterscotch Schnapps, milk, and ice cubes.  You may know of the drink as a shooter, but we preferred it as a long drink with milk. We would sip these in the winter during the show. Just the smell of Bailey’s and butterscotch was enough to make me melt warmly into their old comfy couch and watch Mulder and Scully try to solve the unsolved mysteries of aliens and the like.

Years have gone by, the X-Files is no more, I rarely see those old friends, and I had almost forgotten the drink until I spotted a bottle of Baily’s Irish Cream on sale at the supermarket the other day. I knew right away what I would do with it. And so, Bailey’s is back, and with it, sweet memories of Sunday evenings in Atlanta long ago.

While putting together this recipe, I came across pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon’s lovely recipe for homemade butterscotch sauce on the site Simply Recipes.  It is quite easy to make and keeps for about a month in the fridge. I served this as a frozen mousse, but it will hold its form in the fridge as well. You might take it out of the freezer just a few minutes before serving.

A silicone muffin pan is perfect for making these. It makes unmolding them from the freezer very easy and very clean. If you have not got silicone cookware, use parchment paper to line the bottom and sides of the muffin tins so that when the time comes to serve them, it will be a piece of cake.

Recipe for buttery nipple frozen mousse:

• 2 egg yolks
• 65 ml sugar syrup (30° Baumé, which means bring 100 ml of water and 135 g sugar to a boil) any extra syrup can be stored in the fridge or freezer for a couple of weeks and used to sweeten drinks or make other desserts)
• 130 g white chocolate
• 260 ml whipping cream, very cold
• 3 tbs or more Bailey’s Irish Cream
  

A note on making sugar syrup: Use a very small saucepan and do not cover it. Once the water and sugar have come to a good boil, turn off the heat and allow to cool completely.

1 Prepare the “pâte à bombe.” Put the sugar syrup and egg yolks in a small bowl over a double boiler and heat while whisking with a whip until the mixture is as thick as a “crème anglaise.” It will be at about 83°C and when you dip a spoon in, then run your finger across the back of the spoon, your finger leaves a smooth trace.

2 When the egg-syrup mixture is thickened, pour it into a KitchenAid and beat at full speed, or mix with an electric mixer. Allow to turn at full speed until the mixture has lightened in color, taken a little volume, and cooled down a bit. This will take a few minutes. You now have a pâte à bombe.

3 Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. It needs to be nice and hot, around 45°C.

4 In a cold bowl whip the heavy whipping cream (or double cream) until soft peaks form, being careful not to over-whip. Add the Baily’s Irish cream and whip until just mixed. Taste to decide if you want to add a little more.

5 Assemble!  Using a whisk, add a little melted chocolate to the whipped cream and whisk well, but not more than you need to. Add the rest of the melted chocolate whisking well. Throw the whisk in the sink and pull out a spatula to carefully fold in the “pâte à bombe” or whipped egg syrup mixture until well mixed.

6 Spoon into silicone muffin pans, or parchment lined pans, and freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight before unmolding.

7 When ready to serve, heat the butterscotch sauce just a little and top each mousse with a dripping spoonful. Add a little color to your plate with fresh edible flowers.

Recipe for homemade butterscotch sauce from pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 cup of tightly packed dark brown sugar
• ¾ cup heavy whipping cream (not ultra-pasteurized)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

I will copy the recipe here in case it ever disappears, but go to Simply Recipes for a perfect explanation accompanied by photos that show you exactly how it should look.

Butterscotch takes about a half an hour to make, from start to finish.

1 First, before you begin, make sure you have everything ready to go – the cream and the brown sugar next to the pan, measured and waiting. Making butterscotch is a fast process that cannot wait for hunting around for ingredients.

2 In a heavy bottomed stainless steel 2 quart saucepan, melt butter over low to medium heat. Just before butter is melted, add all dark brown sugar at once and stir with wooden spoon until sugar is uniformly wet.

3 Stir infrequently until mixture goes from looking grainy to molten lava. Make sure to get into the corners of your pot, and watch closely to notice how the mixture changes. It will take about 3 to 5 minutes.

4 Right before you add the cream, the caramelizing brown sugar will begin to look and feel more like liquid and less like thick wet sand.

5 At this point add all the cream at once and replace your spoon with a whisk. Lower heat a little and whisk cream into mixture. When liquid is uniform, turn heat back to medium and whisk every few minutes for a total of 10 minutes.

6 After liquid has been boiling on the stove for its 10 minutes, turn heat off and let rest for a minute or two before transferring into a heatproof storage vessel. (I prefer a stainless steel or glass bowl.) Cool to room temperature.

7 When butterscotch liquid is room temperature, take a small taste. It’s important to know what cooked brown sugar and butter tastes like, and what happens when transforming that flat sweetness into real butterscotch flavor. Whisk in half the salt and vanilla extract. Taste again. Add more salt and vanilla extract until the marvelous taste of real butterscotch is achieved.

Chill butterscotch sauce in a non-reactive container with a tightly fitting lid only after sauce has chilled completely. It will keep for one month refrigerated.

Bergamot pairs deliciously with chocolate.  You will find light and airy chocolate cream in each of these little dark chocolate caps. Some are topped off with homemade lemon sugar.

To make homemade truffles that stay pretty, you need to temper the chocolate. This simply involves heating, cooling, then heating again your dipping chocolate. Why would you bother with such a thing? For a number of reasons, one being that untempered chocolate develops an unsightly dull white sheen.  You need a thermometer to do it right. Mine is broken at the moment, so I did without. The results were not bad, but not outstanding. You might notice in the photos that these truffles are not very shiny. This is because they were poorly tempered. For a very good explanation read David Lebovitz’s article, How to Temper Chocolate.

I found the recipe for the whipped milk chocolate ganache that fills these truffles on pastry chef Ron Mendoza’s blog, One Spoon Quenelle. After a few tweaks, it became whipped bergamot dark chocolate ganache that you can easily make at home.

Start 3 days in advance.

recipe for bergamot chocolate truffles on air:

ingredients:

• 225 g milk
• 50 g corn syrup
• 300 g dark chocolate
• 580 g heavy cream
• Zest of one bergamot
• Juice of half a bergamot
• Plus about 200 g dark chocolate

Day 1:

Bring milk, corn syrup, and zest of bergamot to a simmer.

Break 300 g chocolate into small pieces into a large bowl.

Pass the hot milk mixture through a fine mesh strainer (to take out the pieces of zest, unless you prefer to leave them) pouring over the chocolate and whisk by hand until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth and creamy. It helps to start whisking in the center of the bowl, slowly incorporating the edges.

Add the cream, blend well. Then add the bergamot juice a little at a time, blending well after each addition.

Cover, and refrigerate overnight.

Day 2:

The next day use an electric beater to whip the ganache to soft peaks. I would say that I whipped to good peaks, not soft ones. You should have a mixture that looks and tastes like a rich chocolate mousse. You could always stop here and serve in little bowls.

Use a pastry bag or teaspoon to make small rounds, kisses, or any form of chocolate onto the lid of a Tupperware, or in something that you can cover without smashing the ganache rounds. I used the lid of a Tupperware bowl and used the bowl to cover the chocolates. Here is the upside down Tupperware held up to the light.

Place in the freezer for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Emmett the cat loves to smell each ingredient when I cook.

Day 3:

Temper the 200 g of dark chocolate. Take the frozen chocolates out of the freezer and quickly dip them into the melted chocolate. Place them on a sheet of waxed paper to dry. This can be done with forks or special chocolate making forks.  They will harden very quickly.

Usually I don’t keep chocolate in the fridge, but I kept these refrigerated in a tin and we finished them within the week.

Flavored sugar is very easy to make. These lemon sugar disks were made with sugar, lemon zest, and just enough lemon juice to humidify the sugar. Once humid, you can roll the sugar out flat and use a cookie cutter or knife to cut shapes, or press into molds, then allow to dry for a day or two, or in a slightly warm oven.

Two bites!

recipe for two of our new (and only) cocktail maison: pucker up bergamot

Peel and slice ginger into two small pieces with a little slit for garnishing the glass.

2 fun glasses: Rub fresh ginger around the rim of the glass.

In a shaker: ice cubes, 2 shots vodka, juice of bergamot, sugar. Shake. Shake. Shake.

Pour into two glasses and garnish with ginger. Use candied ginger for the garnish if you want to be sweet, and fresh ginger if you dare.

Cooking whole fish is intimidating. We have discovered that it is in fact simpler than cooking most things. One stress-free way is simply baking in a Pyrex dish with a few herbs, shallots or onions, and a dash or two of white wine. You don’t have to worry too much about overcooking if you set the timer.

Baking fish is simple, but making a mousseline sauce is a bit tricky unless you already know how to make a hollandaise sauce. If a hollandaise sauce is already in your repertoire, a mousseline sauce is a piece of cake. It is a light and airy alternative. On top of it, you can save it in the fridge if you prefer not to serve right away.

If you do not make the sauce ahead of time, you have plenty of time while the fish is baking.

recipe for baked sea bass

• 1 large or two small sea bass, cleaned and scaled
• fresh or dried herbs such as thyme and bay leaf
• 1 onion or 4-6 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced
• a few tablespoons of white wine
• a sprinkle of salt
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2-3 tbs olive oil

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Make 3 diagonal slashes on each side of the fish.

Heat olive oil in a large non-stick pan over medium-high. Sprinkle the fish with flour and cook for about 1 minute on each side, until the skin crisps and browns.

Place the onions or shallots in a baking dish, add the fish, herbs, wine, and salt. Drizzle with the oil left in the frying pan. Bake for about 15 minutes. Turn. Then bake for 10-15 minutes more, until the flesh is opaque throughout.

Ready to serve!

recipe for bergamot mousseline sauce

I used very small portions because I didn’t have enough butter, and we were only two. If you want to make more, you can easily double the recipe. Note: I used far less butter than many recipes call for and it turned out quite well.

If you already have a super recipe for hollandaise sauce, just skip to the step where you add whipped cream.

• about 80 to 100 grams butter (3 – 3.5 oz)
• half an egg yolk
• about 2 or 3 tbs bergamot juice (or lemon juice if you have no bergamot)
• about a 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream

Prepare the ingredients first.

Press the bergamot for juice. I used just 2 tbs, but a little more juice might not hurt. Notice that the bergamot in the photo had already been zested for another recipe.

Separate the yolk of a fresh egg. Notice in the photo that the yolk is very plump and round. This is a sign that it is very fresh.

Clarify the butter. This means to put the butter over very low heat so that it melts but does not boil. You will notice the milk solids fall mostly to the bottom. For the recipe, you want only the butter fat, not the white milk solids. Any floating solids can be skimmed off. Clarified butter is also called ghee.

Don’t skip this step, or your sauce will have a bitter buttermilk flavor.

Next, also using a very small bowl, whip the heavy cream until thick and frothy, just before the soft peak stage. In my photo, this is a small bowl with a mini whisk. Store in the fridge.

Here is the tricky part, where all of this fat and acid become a delicious sauce. There is a fine line between an omelette and a thick sauce, especially with such tiny quantities. Be careful!

Set a bowl next to your stove and a spatula next to it. You will need these on hand as soon as the sauce thickens.

In the smallest sauce pan that you own, on the lowest heat that your stove can possibly give you, heat the half an egg yolk with the bergamot juice, whisking constantly. (Use a double boiler if you want to be even more careful.) If you have doubled the quantities, it’s actually easier to do. Here is where you want to have plan A and plan B.

Plan A: All is going well, no signs of an omelette

As soon as the egg and bergamot juice are well mixed and mousse-like, begin to add the clarified butter about 1 tbs at a time, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and pour into the bowl that you prepared ahead of time. Your sauce will be thick and creamy, the perfect hollandaise.

Plan B: Egad! You think you saw a little part that is turning into an omelette! (Or you just want to be safe).

As soon as the mixture thickens, pour it quickly into the bowl and continue whisking for about 30 seconds while the sauce cools. Add the clarified butter little by little, whisking well after each addition. Your sauce might just look like melted butter, and not even close to a creamy hollandaise, but don’t fret. Be happy that you are making a mousseline sauce and not a hollandaise sauce. This is what happened to me.

Whether you followed plan A or plan B, the next step is the same. Season your hollandaise or semi-hollandaise sauce with salt and pepper. Take your slightly whipped cream out of the fridge and add in a slow stream to the sauce, whipping as you pour. Voilà! It should become light and airy, and look like the creamy, pale yellow peak in the photo below.

Serve it dalloped, piped, or however you would like. If you refrigerate, it will harden like a whipped butter, but even more airy in texture. So if you decide to refrigerate, do it in single portions.

Enjoy! (And hope that someone else will do the dishes!)

Consider yourself lucky if you come across a little citrus fruit too small and yellow to be an orange, too plump and round to be a lemon. Bergamot oranges are grown around the mediterranean. The oil extracted from bergamot peel is the fresh scent we know so well in Earl Grey tea but most of the little spherical fruits are used in the cosmetics industry.

It was the year 2000. Each day after school I stopped at the Church Street coffee shop and ordered a mug of earl grey tea with a chocolate chip cookie. I was 17. I didn’t know it then, but bergamot was probably my high school sweetheart.  When summer came, I ordered it in a glass on ice and sometimes skipped the cookie.  Unlike other high school sweethearts, bergamot grew with me, and I later discovered it in dark chocolate. No surprise to me: it was the dark chocolate in my after school chocolate chip cookie that made the match.

Ten years later. A little box of bergamot oranges was posed unassumingly by clementines and lemons at a small organic grocery shop that I frequent. By rule of thumb, when I see bergamot, I buy bergamot. So four of them went home with me.

The next step: find recipes! Borrow them, make them up, anything to make the bitter perfumed oranges edible, because alone, they are like lemons.

If they had sold these little cookies I discovered on Lucy’s delicious blog, Hungry Cravings, I might have skipped right to it and become a pastry chef.  But then, things could always have been different.

my adaptation of Lucy’s recipe for bergamot orange dreams

ingredients

• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ cup cornstarch (or potato starch, as I had)
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• 6 ounces (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon grated Bergamot orange zest
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed Bergamot orange juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.

In a bowl whisk together the flour, corn starch (or potato starch in my case) and salt. Don’t be afraid to go a little heavy on the starch and a little light on the flour.

In another bowl, beat at medium speed, using the paddle attachment, the butter and 1/3 cup of powdered sugar until fluffy and creamy.  Mix in the bergamot zest, juice, and vanilla extract.

Mix in the dry ingredients until the dough comes together.

Roll the dough into little logs and slice them into l inch long pieces. Place about 1 inch apart on a non-stick cookie sheet or on parchment paper.

Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, until the bottoms are slightly browned, but the tops are still pale.

Note: If you haven’t got very thick or good quality cookie sheets, double them up to help your cookies not to burn on the bottom. I have two types of cookie sheets, one from a consumer cookware shop, and one from a professional cookware shop. The difference was remarkable. The professional sheet yielded a much more evenly baked cookie than the other sheet. Over-baking is a no-no for citrus flavored cookies. The citrus flavor is easily thrown off by the slightly burned flavor. I admit that I sometimes enjoy a very well-baked crust with a lemon curd pie, but these cookies are much more fragrant if not overcooked!

I like to roll the cookies in powdered sugar almost directly after baking. The sugar absorbs some of the cookie’s melted butter, giving a silky effect.  But if you prefer the sugar to stay white and snowy, wait until the cookies are almost cooled down before rolling them in powdered sugar.

Now, eat!