Litha: Sun Cookies with Lemon Curd

I am aware that Litha was last weekend but I want to spread out the recipes. So here is my final Litha recipe for the year. We made sun cookies, to honour the longest day of the year. On top of that we made our own lemon curd. This was something I wanted to do for a long time. So today I will give you 2 recipes, the one for lemon curd, originally from ohmyfoodness, and the one for the cookies from Yummy in my tummy, which used bought lemon curd. But it is a great base recipe for cookies! You can use all kinds of filling for the cookies, they can be rolled, but the dough can also be rolled out to use your cookie cutters. I bought a sun cookie cutter from koek-it to make these. We had a nice jar of lemon curd. The leftover we ate with poffertjes, Dutch mini pancakes. And because I had so much leftover, I baked another batch of cookies a few days later ;)

Sun Cookies with Lemon Curd:

Lemon Curd: (400 ml)
- 2 lemons
- 150 gr unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 125 gr castor sugar

Place butter in a small pan and let it melt slowly. Squeeze the lemon juice in the pan and stir through. Meanwhile mix the sugar and eggs until airy. Pour the butter mixture with the eggs and stir through. Add everything back into the pan and bring to a boil. Let it simmer on low until the mixture thickens, for about 2 minutes. Pour it in a sterilized jar and place it in the fridge to cool down. It will thicken more.
The lemon curd will keep for about a week and a half.

Sun Cookies: (about 12-15 cookies)
- 110 gr butter, room temperature
- 50 gr powdered sugar
- 1 egg yolk, room temperature
- 150 gr flour
- 25 gr corn flour
- lemon curd

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees. Place a baking sheet on your baking tray. Mix the butter with a mixer. Sift the powdered sugar in the bowl and mix together. Then add the egg yolk and mix again. Sift flour and corn flour and stir through with a spoon, and eventually using your hands to form a nice ball of dough. Only until there are no trances of flour left, do not over knead!

Put some flour on your work desk. Roll the dough until you have the height of your cookie cutter. Use the cutter to make cookies. Roll the dough again until you have not enough left to cut out another cookie.
Place on the baking sheet, and gently make a hole with your thumb in the middle of the cookie, but do not stick it all the way through. Fill the holes with lemon curd. The cookies won't grow much bigger so you can place them fairly close to each other.
Bake for 10 minutes, but not more than that. If you do, the lemon curd starts to caramelize (well at least with the home made version) The cookies will stay fairly light.

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Litha: Peach & Basil Risotto

Yesterday it was Litha, the longest day of the year. And as usual we cooked something special on that day. Actually we are spreading it out over the weekend. Today we will bake sun cookies, that recipe will follow later. I discovered I have a love for risotto with a sweet touch when I made strawberry risotto for the first time. That is why I really wanted to try this risotto as well. It is a really nice dish, not too sweet, but the peaches create little bites of sweetness. It is a great combination with the basil. The original recipe comes from Tasty Kitchen.

Peach and Basil Risotto: (serves 3)
- 3 cups vegetable broth
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 cup risotto rice
- 0.5 cups grated parmesan cheese
- 0.5 cups peaches, chopped (about 3)
- 1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
- pinch of salt
- pinch of nutmeg

Boil some vegetable broth. Make sure it stays warm, or else the rice will cool down too quickly. In a large pan melt the butter. Add rice and coat with butter. Fry for about 1 minute. Pour in about 1 cup of broth and let it simmer until the rice has absorbed the broth. Stirring regularly. You do not have to stir all the time, but never leave your risotto alone. Add more broth when the first batch is absorbed, about 1 cup at a time and let the rice absorb the broth before you add more. Do this until your rice is done, for about 15-20 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in cheese, basil, peaches, salt and nutmeg.

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Litha: Spaghetti with Tomato-Peach Sauce

Litha is drawing near and with that the beginning of the summer. Of course I will cook with the seasons again and will post a few Litha recipes in the next couple of weeks. Foods that I associate with Litha are of course all kind of fruits that are in season now, like cherries. But especially fruits that represent the sun. Think oranges, lemons, mango, peaches but also tomatoes. Thyme, basil & lavender are herbs that are used often. I choose to make spaghetti with tomato peach sauce because the combination sounded different but nice and sweet. And also because I use any excuse to get my fruits in. The original recipe is from Running to the Kitchen.

Spaghetti with Tomato-Peach Sauce (serves 4)
- 2 large peaches, chopped
- 4 cups cherry tomatoes
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, tops sliced off, drizzled with olive oil and wrapped in aluminium foil
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp honey (replace with agave syrup for vegan version)
- 0.25 cup basil leaves
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 0.25 tsp cinnamon
- 450 gr spaghetti
- salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 200 degrees and grease a baking sheet. Mix peaches, tomatoes and spring onion with olive oil and honey in a large bowl and then spread out onto baking sheet. Add garlic cloves wrapped in aluminium foil to the baking sheet as well. Roast for 25-30 minutes, tossing occasionally. Once roasted, remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Meanwhile cook the spaghetti, drain and return to the pot. Unwrap garlic cloves and remove roasted garlic from it’s shell. Add garlic and tomato/peach mixture to a food processor. Add remaining ingredients and process until blended but still slightly chunky. Season with salt & pepper to taste and add the basil. Mix spaghetti with the sauce and toss to coat.

The first day the sauce was rather thin and a bit soupy. On the second day the sauce thickened and tasted even better than the first day :)

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