On Cooking Lemony Things
I'm pretty good at main-dish cooking, but I don't have much of a repertoire of desserts or baked goods, simply because I don't usually make them. They don't usually require exotic ingredients or anything, so I figure I should make them! Possibly weekly. I was going to start with the Strawberry Poke Cake that Cooks Country had on the show today, but I lacked both strawberries and strawberry jell-o, so would probably have gone with blueberries and lemon or blue raspberry jell-o, and for some reason Phil objected. Sure, sometimes the recipe experimentation ends badly, but I don't think it would have in this case....
So instead I'm making Lemon Curd Bars Cockaigne from the Joy of Cooking. They were the first recipe I found that I had all the ingredients for. Well, almost. I started and then realized that I was one egg short, so I used a mashed-up overripe banana instead. Phil is hovering about the kitchen. He *loves* lemon bars, but usually has to make his own from a box mix.
Useful equivalencies for lemons.
1/2 tsp. lemon extract = 1 tsp. lemon zest
1 lemon = 1 Tbsp. lemon zest
Therefore, zest from 1 lemon = 1/2 Tbsp. lemon extract
It is also important to remember that lemon extract is not the same thing as lemon juice. For my--fourteenth? fifteenth?--birthday, I asked my mother for a lemon cake. She didn't have lemon juice, so she just substituted lemon juice instead. It was an overpowering cake. The frosting, too. And it looked odd, because the cake had sunk drastically on one side and so she tried cutting it into layers to save it, but it was still uneven, a zig-zag toppling Seussian cake, with blue frosting, because she had no yellow food coloring. The cake lives in infamy.
So instead I'm making Lemon Curd Bars Cockaigne from the Joy of Cooking. They were the first recipe I found that I had all the ingredients for. Well, almost. I started and then realized that I was one egg short, so I used a mashed-up overripe banana instead. Phil is hovering about the kitchen. He *loves* lemon bars, but usually has to make his own from a box mix.
Useful equivalencies for lemons.
1/2 tsp. lemon extract = 1 tsp. lemon zest
1 lemon = 1 Tbsp. lemon zest
Therefore, zest from 1 lemon = 1/2 Tbsp. lemon extract
It is also important to remember that lemon extract is not the same thing as lemon juice. For my--fourteenth? fifteenth?--birthday, I asked my mother for a lemon cake. She didn't have lemon juice, so she just substituted lemon juice instead. It was an overpowering cake. The frosting, too. And it looked odd, because the cake had sunk drastically on one side and so she tried cutting it into layers to save it, but it was still uneven, a zig-zag toppling Seussian cake, with blue frosting, because she had no yellow food coloring. The cake lives in infamy.