Tag Archives: zest

Lemon Cheesecake

We’ve been super obsessed with lemons recently, so Tami made up this fresh dessert! Top with strawberries and chocolate sauce for an uber-decedant treat! Cut back on the amount of lemon juice for a more subtle flavor!

Crust Ingredients:

2 (generous) cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick melted butter
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Cheesecake Ingredients:

16 ounces cream cheese
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons lemon zest
6 tablespoons lemon juice


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Meyer Lemon Bars

Originally drooled over these on foodporndaily.com and then every so slightly adapted the recipe from kitchenrunway.com to our needs. Which simply means a little more lemon zest & juice!

Crust Ingredients:

1 C of unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ C sugar
2 C flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon Meyer lemon zest

Filling Ingredients:

6 extra large eggs, at room temperature
3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons grated Meyer lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons)
1 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice
1 cup all-purpose flour

powder sugar for dusting

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Homemade Ice Cream


The base is the same regardless, but you have some options when it comes to the sweetener that goes with the flavor. If you don’t want to use sugar (we try not to!)  we  suggest agave nectar or succanat, depending on the flavor you choose. Succanat has more of a molasses taste to it, so we wouldn’t recommend it for the lemon ice cream, but it would be great if you wanted to make cinnamon ice cream or something more substantial like chocolate.

For our first try we decided to do lemon and strawberry & banana. The lemon came out very lemony (which we like!) and the strawberry banana was a perfectly smooth end of summer flavor.

Ice Cream Base

4 egg yolks
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon zantham gum
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup half and half
1 1/2 cup heavy cream

Lemon Flavor

finely grated zest of 3 lemons
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2/3 cup agave nectar or 3/4 cup succanat or 3/4 cup sugar

Strawberry/Banana Flavor

1 pint of strawberries
1 banana
1/3 cup agave or 1/2 cup succanat or 1/2 cup sugar

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Mixed Berry Cheesecake

Ingredients:

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
3 tablespoons sour cream ~we didn’t have any so we used some yogurt and heavy cream!
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Avocado Potato Salad

Monday night. It’s Peter’s night to cook for Lisa. At 4:00 pm he says “Can you look in the fridge and come up with a fancy dinner I can make for Lisa using what we already have? She’ll be back at 5:30” I grab my laptop, hustle into the kitchen, take stock of what’s there and head over to Epicurious to use their awesome advanced search feature. Based on what we have this is how the four course meal shapes up: Chicken Veggie Quiche, Avocado Potato Salad, Avocado Soup and a Berry Reduction Sauce over ice cream for dessert!

See the Chicken Vegetable Quiche entry for a photo of the salad next to a slice of quiche!

Ingredients:

3/4 pound small red potatoes (about 6)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh lemon zest
3 tablespoons minced fresh chives
1 firm-ripe California avocado

Preparation:

In a saucepan cover potatoes with salted cold water, simmer, covered, until tender, 15 to 20 minutes
Drain potatoes in a colander and quarter
In a bowl stir together warm potatoes, oil, lemon juice, zest, chives, and salt and pepper to taste.
Pit and peel avocado and cut into 3/4-inch pieces.
Add avocado to potato mixture, gently tossing to combine

Hot Lemon Soufflé

Best served hot. Really. We (five of us today) managed to devour this soufflé (that technically serves eight) straight out of the oven.

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
4 egg yolks
grated zest of 3 lemons
5 egg whites
powdered sugar for sprinkling

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