Lemon Week 2012
I’m so pleased to announce that I will be blogging another Lemon Week! I figure I might as well squeeze as much out of those lemons as I can while I still live here! Ha ha. Pun intended. Anyway, I’ve got a couple new recipes and a couple of old ones and hopefully I can put something new up all week. We’ll see.
You know what’s cool about Lemon Week around here? We’ve made such a big deal about it in the past that now my kid gets really excited about it. It’s like a festival in our own house. We even dress up for it:
Here I am freshly showered, in my lemon week shirt and full of enthusiasm (and coffee probably).
I even took an Instagram of my shirt I was so excited about the whole event.
Bug dressed up in her finery which included yellow and orange accessories. We were ready!
Bring on the lemons!
So first we made lemon bars which I’ve made a zillion times and blogged about. The recipe calls for extra zest so they are extra zingy and delicious. (faster more direct link) I love them. Swoon! Swoon! Swoon! I could eat them all day until I popped.
Then we made lemon loaf which is sort of like what they serve at Starbucks but without the hard candy icing on the top. It has a sugary lemon juice that you pour on top that I think is even yummier, personally. It’s my Great Grandma’s recipe.
You’d like the recipe? Well let me share!
Ingredients:
• 2 cups of sugar
• 1 1/2 sticks of melted butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• 3 cups of flour
• 4 tsp baking powder (that seems like a lot to me but it tastes fine, shows you what I know)
• 1 tsp salt
• Grated rind of 2 lemons
For glaze
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 1 1/2 tbs sugar
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 355º F
2. Mix sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt and lemon rind
3. Pour into two loaf pans
4. Bake for 45 minutes
5. Mix together juice of two lemons and 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
6. Pour lemon mixture over piping hot loaves and serve!
It’s a pretty simple recipe. I love that when I typed it up originally I typed “flower” instead of flour. I guess that means it was passed onto me a long time ago when I was even worse at spelling than I am now. Which I guess could technically be yesterday but I know it was a really long time ago because my great grandma died a long time ago and I’m pretty sure she passed it onto me when she was still alive. So I must have been a teenager or younger. I remember eating it in her little condominium kitchen at her little metal table with the aluminum sides. I remember that and the awful disgusting pepper slaw she always used to make. Funny how things like that stick with you.
Anyway, it was fun to make and think about her making this back in the olden days. I wasn’t super fond of her in her last days. She was a crotchety old bitter woman but here and there I see clues that she had a kinder loving side. I think her lemon bread definitely spoke to that.
Especially the lemon juice topping. I think you should all rush out and make some and then come back here and reminisce with me in the comments about your Grandma. Did she make lemon bread for you? Was it better than Starbucks?
Tomorrow: Lemon Pickle! I’m so excited! You’re gonna LOVE it.
15 Comments
JennyC
Thank you for sharing! I definitely want to try both recipes since my sweetie loves lemons. As for my Grandma, she never made any desserts when I was younger (still doesn’t!) but she WAS the first person to teach me inadvertently what heart burn was, lol! Btw, you look fantastic in your first pic, a real natural beauty! :)
bethany actually
You know I would be all over making that lemon loaf TONIGHT if I had any lemons…which I don’t. :-(
Auntie Keren
EEEW! Gramma’s pepper slaw…I remember that! chopped green peppers and cabbage mixed with celery seed and vinegar. Must have been an Amish thing she picked up while living in Pennsylvania. Not as bad as her Loo-Loo Paste though; grated cheddar mixed with chopped green olives and worchestershire.
I’m glad you showed a photo of pouring the glaze on the hot loaves while they were still in the pans. Very important step to ensure that all of the glaze is absorbed and not running off the sides. Love that sizzle!
nicole @ deliajude
oooh, lemon week.
you could also try poking a few holes into the cake with the end of a wooden spoon before poring the syrup over the loaf…the lovely syrup flows into the divots…lemony heaven I tell you! Try it next time you’ll see.
Yara
I need to see if I have enough butter… or if I need to buy a few more pounds. I have lemons up the wazoo (not literally)
I will make this bread tomorrow!
My grandma would have never made a lemon cake/bar/anything lemon at all. She couldn’t eat lemon without one of her eyes twitching. I think anything sour made her eye twitch. I miss my grandma ?
Rebecca
Both of my grandma’s had apple tree’s so we made a LOT of applesauce… When we get some good lemons over here I have to try that lemon bar recipe. I am VERY picky about lemon bars!
KelleyD
we had a lemon cake that we always made. It used a box lemon cake mix, lemon jello, and then for a glaze {which is what really makes it incredible} was just lemon juice and powdered sugar.
Over the years I have made variations with orange cake and a lime cake, and I think I even did a lemon-lime one once :)
a chris
Coincidence: lemon cake is next on my mental list of treats to bake. Yours looks delicious. Maybe I’ll try your recipe instead. I bet it’s incredible with fresh lemons. I don’t think I’ve ever had a lemon that wasn’t flown or trucked in from somewhere, but if it’s like peas and tomatoes, there’s a huge difference.
Lisa
Yum those treats look delicious! And these pictures are really making me long for springtime – it’s been so cold here and I just can’t wait until I can go outside without bundling up again!
s
not a big lemon fan, but that bread does look good… one of my grandmothers was supposedly a decent cook but I honestly don’t recall one meal! I know we had easter dinner with her, but I have no food memories attached to her – lots of other memories, but no food ones. I do make a choc chip cookie that is supposedly her recipe and those are yummy! My other grandmother was a horrible cook – truly awful awful awful according to my dad and other family members, but she used to always make me chocolate brownies with chocolate frosting that I used to think were the best, but the rest of my family say were horrible hockey pucks – methinks I just ate the frosting!
Susan:)
Your lemons always look so good! I’ve never really liked lemon cake, but that loaf does look tasty! If I had all those lemons, I’d probably make tons of lemonade with my nieces! I am intrigued by the lemon pickle too!
Sigh, I never really got to spend enough time with my grandmas, and they are both gone now. I have a few good memories at least, but both my grandmas lived far away from me, so I didn’t get to just hang out with them while growing up. I wish I could have. It saddens me now that my mom also lives far from her grandkids. When I have my own kids, I think I’ll have to insist that either I move back to my mom’s area, or that she come live where I am. Kids need their grandmas too, I think!
Sarah
I really shouldn’t have read this on an empty stomach. My dinner’s on the way, but all I want right now is a big piece of cake.
pinky
My grandmother was great – she was famous for her chocolate and vanilla sponge cakes, which I have never attempted.
Even better though – she used to bring me breakfast in bed at her house when I would spend the night, and then we’d watch old movies and I would try on her makeup. She was awesome.
Kuky
I actually, no kidding, did that touch down hands up in the air move and said “lemon week”. Seriously. :)
I think it’s really nice you have recipes handed down. I don’t know if it’s a thing with my family or what but I don’t have any recipes. Well actually barely any memories. Maybe it has to do with them moving from a different country. You can’t take a lot with you when you do that.
a chreis
I made this. Managed to freeze five cupcakes out of the whole recipe before we demolished the rest. It was addictive, largely due to the glaze. Adding glaze seems like a lot of faff when you’re thinking about it, but it’s so simple and conveniently uses the inside of the lemons we already shaved naked, that it’s a relief to actually do it. Thanks for sharing the recipe! I do believe I’ll add it to the binder my mom started for me.
If anyone ever reads this and wants to know, I only used three eggs (because we buy large ones and because I wanted to save the rest that we had), and I used a microscopic pinch of baking soda (don’t have baking powder and don’t like baking soda). It was dense, but it was uniformly cooked, not wet in the middle. Also used lactose-free milk!