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When Life Gives You (Meyer) Lemons...

...you make Meyer Lemon Cake!

There's an oft-used, New-Agey belief out there that holds that if one can imagine something happening, then indeed, that thought will come to fruition.  The "So Mote It Be" principle, I guess we can call it - the minute a picture or idea etc. comes into our brains is the minute it begins to become real.

Well, it happened to me this weekend.  With these.


I first read about Meyer lemons in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, oh, sometime last summer.  Then, I came across mention of them in other food reading and recipes.  A lemon-mandarin orange hybrid and sweeter, smaller than regular lemons, they seemed like an exotic California staple that I'd never come across here in the Midwest.

Until Sunday, when I was doing groceries at the local Walmart (I know, I know).  Right there, in the produce aisle...with a celestial beam of light shining upon it, was this:



Heck yes, I snapped it up like nobody's business (did I just actually use that phrase? what exactly does it mean?).  And with yesterday's snow day, there seemed like no better time to experiment with them.  One of the first hits that popped up when I typed 'Meyer lemon recipe' into the Google was http://www.tastespotting.com/tag/chez+panisse.  Chez Panisse is Alice Waters' restaurant.

Serendipity?  I think so.

Further cyberspace travels bring me to a blog called Onions and Chocolate, where, as you can read, is the recipe for the cake.  There's a lot of folding in this recipe, which I find nowadays, I don't mind.  In the end, I got this:





A moist, dense lemony cake with a pound-cake like texture.  I also did a powdered sugar-lemon juice glaze, which was okay...but I think I'd try something different next time (a lemon anglaise, maybe?).  And, I might add more citrus next time (orange), or go with a strawberry coulis instead of the glaze.

See, here's the thing.  Recipes are all over the place now...but I will forever be tweaking and turning and twisting.  It's kind of fun.

But, back to lemons.  When my son and I taste-tested the Meyers versus regular lemons, there is definitely a difference...but I don't know if I'd say sweeter.  I think I'll have to try them again!

And again, likely.

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