As the saying goes, “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade”, something I’ve taken to heart literally since I do enjoy making a refreshing pitcher of homemade lemonade when we have lemons. This time though, I decided to try something different. What else could I do with the fresh, yellow lemons in my possession? I mulled over trying to bake lemon bars, lemon cookies, lemon cake, lemon muffins, even lemon pie. Then I got a tad overwhelmed with the choices. What was I doing? I love baking bread, so why not try baking Lemon Bread?
The thing is, Lemon Bread…never ate it before, never baked it before. I’ve never actually baked using lemons at all. This was something new to try.
I found and read so many recipes online, but I went with a recipe that didn’t require sour cream, lemon cake mix, buttermilk and yogurt.
Here’s what I ended up with – a Lemon Bread with a crumbly, dark top crust (I’d even use the word “burnt”…haha!) yet surprisingly moist and tangy inside.
So what happened to the top crust? The outside cooked faster than the inside. Yeah, bummer. While the recipe indicated a bake time of 65 minutes, I started checking it at the 45-minute mark and brought out the bread from the oven at 55 minutes. By then, the top cracked and looked dark already. In addition, unlike banana bread batter, this batter was very gooey and thin. I was ready to throw it out and restart, but what if it was really meant to be that way? After pouring the batter in my loaf pan, I discovered that I had way too much batter. For the briefest of moments, I was afraid that it would overflow from the pan (it didn’t, thank goodness!).
When my taste testers tried it, they said it was pretty good, although my sister requested “a bright lemony flavor” next time. Personally, I thought it was quite tart, but to her, the lemon flavor was far too subtle. I did brush it with a bit of glaze because I didn’t want it to be too sweet.
I haven’t baked anything new since 2021 kicked in, so this is officially my first baking experiment for the year. Until the next round of baking!
