Tag Archives: lemon zest

Life gave me lemons so I made candied lemon peels

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by in baking

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I make no bones about working 2 jobs and going 90mph through life.  As the saying goes, a rolling stone gathers no moss, but I figure that also holds true to germs and cooties as well.  I stay healthy by getting 8 winks a night, a good diet, and lots of walking.

Well, the cosmos tried to throw me under a bus this week by tearing a muscle in my leg.  I am naturally a very brisk walker and I was just handed a speeding ticket.  This week I’m getting lapped by old ladies with walkers.

Doctor said no crutches needed, just go slow and take it easy, but this sucks.  It took me the full cycle of the cross walk to cross the street.  I don’t even have a good story to tell.  I wasn’t dancing naked on a bar or even skipping through a field of daisies.  I stepped off a ladder.  I’m glad I have a sense of humor about life.

I can’t walk, but I can still stand in the kitchen and make something yummy.  One of the things I’ve been finding as I’ve been experimenting with scone and muffin recipes is the flavors aren’t very strong.  As a cook, I can look at a recipe and know I need to add more, but deciphering that in a baking recipe is taking me a bit of learning.

I’ve tried a lemon ginger scone a few times with not much success.  But I think I’m almost there.  In my next attempt I’m adding both candied ginger and candied lemon peel.  I want to know I’m eating lemon and ginger.

Again I sought google’s vast offering of recipes and found many, but the one that struck my eye was another local gal, Luna Cafe.  Sounded like she had experimented and read the same recipes I had found, so why reinvent the wheel.  I chose well.

While the recipe seems a bit step-heavy (blanch 3 times?!), it was well worth it. The result is a bright lemon flavor with no bitterness.   The one thing I did differently from her is that I used a vegetable peeler to remove the peel and I got very little pith.

We go through a lot of lemons at the still and I’ll be making a more concerted effort to save the peels because this will now be a staple in my kitchen.  Stay tuned for my Lemon Ginger Scones.

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little miss muffin

04 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in baking, breakfast

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We surround ourselves with people who compliment us.  Of course we aren’t going to hang out with someone who constantly tells us how fat we are or how bad we look.  The other compliment.  Their skills and traits are a good balance for our skills.

I am the cook.  I am not the baker.  I have friends who bake.  I don’t like to measure.  Cooking is throwing a bit of this and bit of that into a pot and whammo- you’ve got gold!

I work with a great organization called Rebuilding Together that does home repair for low income elderly and disabled.  There are things going on throughout the year, but on the last Saturday of April every year there are roughly 50 houses being worked on.  that is 50 houses just in Portland alone.  This is going on across the country.

Each year, I solicit coffee and pastry donations from Starbucks.  This year, I decided I’m going to make pastries.  This is a huge endeavor for one unskilled as myself.  I figure if I bake 1 or 2 different muffin or scones a week for the next 3 weeks, then I’ll be set.  Throw them in the freezer and pull them out the day before.  (dirty little secret- that’s what your local bakery does for starbuck’s, so why can’t I?)

Tonight after doing a few chores and having a cocktail, I made Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins.  Thanks to google and the blogosphere I had a few good places to start.  I follow a lot of foodie folks and thanks to Annie’s Eats, I’m off to a good start.

I mostly followed the recipe.  Really no variations or strays I feel worth mentioning. I figured since I don’t want to kill my volunteers, I wouldn’t experiment too much.  I don’t want to brag, but I don’t think I messed this one up too badly.  We’ll see what the troops have to say on the big day.