Sicilian Lemon Loaf

It is lemon season here in my corner of the world, and gracious but do I have lemons! My CSA keeps giving me them, so I had fourteen of them on my counter as of this morning and a half lemon in the fridge. I needed to find a lot of things to do with my lemons. A lot of lemon recipes call for a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, maybe topping out at 1/3 of a cup, but I have Lemons. So. Many. Lemons.

I remembered that my friend does an orange cake with whole oranges, so the search was on: could I find a tasty recipe where I could puree up an entire lemon or two at a time and have something at the end that would freeze well? It turns out that yes, I can! Especially for the Meyer lemons in the midst of the horde. (Yes, horde, not hoard--these are not objects I am collecting but a mass of organisms organizing themselves in my fruit bowl! They have Intent!)

The only thing I lacked for the recipe I found was yogurt, so I thickened some milk with ground flaxseed. I wanted it to turn out with the same moistness that I would get with yogurt, and I do believe that I achieved that. I also added poppy seeds because I ordered poppy seeds in bulk last go 'round. (Why did I think I needed a pound of poppy seeds? Who knows, but I will put them in everything even mildly appropriate now.) Also, Chris likes poppy seeds.

Sicilian Lemon Loaf

adapted from Christina's Cucina

Ingredients

1/3 cup milk

2 Tablespoons ground flaxseed

3 eggs

1 1/2 c (12 oz) sugar

1 3/4 c (~9.625 oz) all purpose flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup butter, softened

2 Tablespoons poppy seeds

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large or 2 medium Meyer lemon(s), about (10.5 oz), washed and cut into pieces (with the rind, but remove the seeds) 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F

2. Prep a loaf pan by either lining with parchment or greasing with oil.

3. Mix the milk and ground flaxseed in a small bowl. Set aside for 15 minutes.

4. In a large mixing bowl, beat together eggs and sugar until fluffy.

5. Sift together flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture in the large bowl along with the softened butter.

6. Mix in milk/flax and vanilla extract.

7. In a food processor, process the whole lemon until it is almost pureed. Add this lemon to the cake mixture and fold in until evenly combined, then put the batter into the prepared loaf pan.

8. Bake for 80-90 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Though lemon poppy seed muffins are not my favorite muffins, I am always amused when I make them because of Chris's inordinately happy response. He certainly enjoys their lemony goodness with his mid-morning tea! I, on the other hand, have to limit myself (which is no bad thing in and of itself, I just get a little jealous when Chrissy grabs three) because I inherited my grandmother's reaction to opiates. That is to say, I can only consume so many poppy seeds before I get shaky and nauseous (and forget anything stronger). Nonetheless, these seem to be the only muffins we ever make around here, and this is one of the best recipes I've found--tweaked only a little to include my homemade limoncello and no fresh lemon zest.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
adapted from Annie's Eats
yields about 12 muffins

Ingredients:
9 ounces (~2 cups) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature or softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 medium eggs
1/3 cup limoncello
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup yogurt (plain or vanilla)

For the glaze (optional):
½ cup confectioners’ sugar
1-2 tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350°F

2. Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, seeds, b. powder & soda, salt)

3. In a separate bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy (~2 min. with electric beater, 3-4 min. by hand)

4. To the sweetened butter, beat in the eggs one at a time

5. Add the limoncello, lemon extract and vanilla to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly

6. To the wet ingredients, add 1/2 of the dry, mix; the cup of yogurt, mix; other 1/2 of dry, mix

7. Into a greased or lined muffin tin, divide up the batter evenly

8. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean

9. While they are still warm, glaze if desired

Limoncello

So...there are a lot of recipes out there for limoncello. A lot. Not to mention, I'm only doing a small batch to test my method, as it were, so which one do I choose? So far, I'm not really going with any of them, but some amalgamation. I say so far, because I've only done the first couple of steps and now it has to sit. Some say that it only has to sit 10 days per waiting period, but closer to 45 days each supposedly produces a better, smoother flavor. I lasted 28 days for the first wait, and am now on the second.

Anyway, here's the mini-batch recipe that I've worked out.

3 large lemons, zested
250 mL (1/3 of a fifth) 80 proof vodka (and yes, that's a bit low, but I decrease the water in the simple syrup to make up for it)
7 ounces sugar (a bit less than a cup)
3/4 cup water

Once you've zested your washed lemons, stick the zest in a glass jar large enough to hold all your liquid, such as a pint-jar. Add to that the 250 mL vodka (I am using Svedka--relatively cheap but decently smooth). Then put it in a dark cabinet and let it sit. And sit. And sit. For hopefully 45 days. If you can. Certainly no less than 10, but the longer the more lemon-y it gets. And some people recommend shaking it every 2 or 3 days for the first week to week and a half.

For the second part, you put the water and sugar in a pan on the stove, bring to a boil (not too hot, lest you caramelize your sugar), and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. While this is cooling, strain the zest from the liquor. When the syrup is mostly chilled, add it to the liquor and put it back in the dark and let it sit again for just as long. Again, the longer the better, because it's supposed to produce a smoother flavor.

Honestly, our vessel of choice for the limoncello wasn't large enough for the whole amount of syrup. Instead of choosing a bigger bottle, we chose to do half the syrup into the lemon vodka and let the other half steep with the strained out lemon zest in the fridge (note that! unless you want to seal the jar, the syrup must be kept in the fridge!). As it happens, I used the syrup was used for other things (aka, lemon ginger cookies). The end result is certainly more similar to limoncello than lemon vodka, and it isn't ridiculously sweet, so that's nice.

At this point, you will filter the limoncello...or at least that's what they say. We actually didn't, and it doesn't taste like bath water as everyone seemed to be saying. It's a little rough, but that could be just because we didn't leave it alone in the closet long enough. I don't know why everyone seemed to be so against this, but some of the options that come to mind are that they didn't let the sugar dissolve properly in the syrup, or using all the syrup makes a significant difference, or even perhaps they let the syrup sit long enough to be contaminated and things tried growing and/or fermenting in their limoncello.

That said, there is another property that filtering might effect--ability to store in the freezer. Ours froze. Like I said, this may be because of not filtering, or it might be that we didn't choose a vodka with a high enough proof, or it may have been the recipe we followed. Regardless, it seems to be just fine chilling in the fridge.

Canning Citrus: Lemon Curd

This month was going to be terribly exciting because I was going to be able to try my hand at a marmalade. Alas, the shipment of citrus Chris and I were supposed to get two weeks ago has still not arrived. Fortunately, while we were visiting Stosh, he had a couple extra lemons and some tasty eggs, so I was able to whip up a batch of a different citrus preserve, lemon curd. I've never had any sort of fruit curd before, so I was operating with no idea of the outcome--but what an outcome it was! Silky, smooth, tangy with a hint of sweetness! It was Yum. Here's the basic proportions I used:

3 egg yolks, beaten until lightened
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon (on a small-holed grater if you don't want to strain before jarring)
1 fl oz limoncello, added after you pull it off the heat

It was suggested that I cook the beaten yolks with the zest first, but I thought that was silly, so I put everything together (except the liquor, of course) on the stove and cooked until it thickened. The recipe above gives about 3/4 c. of product, and a relatively thin set. I think I'll up the egg yolks to four when I do this again, but I still call it a wonderful success.