Lemon Angel Food Cake

It's been forever, I know. It' s not that I forgot; I just don't bake as much as I used to. Plus, a majority of the people who read this blog are the same ones who I bake for so that motivation to write a post is also gone. I don't know if I'm even going to announce this post on social media - especially since the recipe was for Easter and I'm writing this on Father's Day weekend 🤦 (which I admit was partially because I forgot about the blog).

As I've mentioned before, I don't like to be wasteful so I save the egg whites that are leftover from the Pepperoni Pinwheels and freeze them. Once I had 12, I held onto them to use in an angel food cake. This year, I decided to make it a lemon one since (for once) I had asked my mom for some lemons from the lemon tree outside their Arizona house. After some searching, I finally landed on a recipe from Two Cups Flour (which ended up backfiring - more in the notes).

Lemon-Raspberry Cake with Meringue Topping

Mother's Day was a little different this year. My parents were home from Arizona before the day instead of on it like previous years. Since Auntie Vicki and Uncle Rob weren't going to be home (Carly graduated from Gonzaga that day), Mom and Dad hosted Mother's Day with me, Nonni, Anthony, Kati, and the boys. Because I once again had 8 egg whites in the freezer, I started looking for recipes that use them when Mom asked me to make dessert. She requested no cookies so I was a bit limited. I eventually found a food tip that suggests replacing frosting with meringue, complete with measurements for a 9x13 cake. For the cake itself, I looked through my Berries/Mixed Fruit board on Pinterest for a lemon raspberry cake (a popular flavor combo in my family). I eventually found a simple recipe from Betty Crocker's website.

Lemon Raspberry Sugar Cookie Bars

This year for Mother's Day we kept it small again: like last year, I went to Auntie Vicki and Uncle Rob's house. It was the three of us, Carly, and Nonni. This time, Uncle Rob's mom Ruth joined us as well. As always I offered to make dessert. Auntie Vicki suggested something fruity, specifically raspberry or lemon, and cookie bars. So after looking through my magazine cutouts, I started combing through Pinterest (it's actually a bit quick to go through when you're looking for something specific). I ended up finding a recipe that was both raspberry and lemon from the blog Butter with a Side of Bread.

Jell-O Cookies

While delicious, my chocolate caramel macarons unfortunately didn't last long. Apparently, while great in theory, adding caramel ice cream topping to the filling of sandwich cookies that aren't going in the fridge leads to white fuzzy mold after a couple months (especially when there are some warm days during that time). So I had to toss my hard work in the trash and find a new recipe. Fortunately for my indecisive brain, I had a starting point.

You see, a year ago while on Facebook during lockdown, I came across a sponsored post for an artisanal soft pretzel company called Eastern Standard Provisions. I was hooked from the start. There are two options for buying the various types they offer: individually or as a variety in a box. Almost everything comes with regular salt but one of the boxes, a collaboration with St. Jude's, comes with Raspberry Lime sugar. Since I like my soft pretzels plain I usually toss the salt but I decided to keep the sugar when I bought the St. Jude's box, figuring I'd bake with it.

Because it's sugar I decided to take the obvious route and find some cookies to roll in it (like with snickerdoodles). As always I wasn't sure where to start on Pinterest at first. Except with lemon, since that's a flavor that goes well with both raspberry and lime. After some searching I decided to look at the Jell-O cookie recipes I've saved and see if there was one that included rolling the cookie dough in sugar. Didn't find that so I just decided to pick one and roll as many cookies as I could. I finally settled on a recipe from 99 Easy Recipes.

Lemon Yogurt Cookies

I've noticed that lemon is a bit of an Italian flavor. So to me it made sense to find a lemon recipe for my Italian family to enjoy while on vacation. I chose a cookie recipe from one of my cookies and bars cookbooks. This one had an ingredient I had never used before: yogurt. Still, I figured it'd be easy to find. Lemon's gotta be a yogurt flavor that all stores have right?

Nope! The only lemon yogurts that Target has are Greek, which I was aware would change the flavor. So to avoid changing it for the worse, I went to Safeway after putting my groceries away at home. They tend to have a lot more flavor options of certain items. Fortunately, yogurt ended up being one of those items. Now all I had left to do was make the cookies.

Lemon Poppy Seed Mini Muffins

I got another new baking tool for Christmas - a mini muffin pan. Seeing as how there's not a lot of choices for mini cupcake liners, I decided to use it for muffins, as least at first. I even had a recipe in mind: a muffin recipe I found in the newspaper insert Parade back in 2012 (at least I think it was Parade - the torn page I saved doesn't have the name of the publication on it). It's a base muffin recipe with almost a dozen different variations, including lemon poppy seed (just like with soft pretzels, I think this lemon "kick" is permanent). I quickly realized that I wasn't sure how long to bake them for since this is a mini pan. After doing a little research, I found an informative page that explains how to convert a muffin recipe into a mini muffin recipe, specifically for the baking time. Pretty simple - I think I might do all my muffins like this from now on.

Chocolate-Coated Lemon Almond Biscotti

I'm still kinda on "dark chocolate" for Anthony. And "lemon." Two flavors that I discovered go together when I first successfully made macarons. So I decided to do both for Anthony's present. I realized that (almost) every year so far I've made biscotti for someone. And for whatever reason, I decided that this year was gonna be Anthony's year to receive biscotti. I pretty quickly found a recipe that fit the bill, combining both the original recipe and a suggested variation, in Crazy About Cookies, one of my many baking cookbooks.

Jello Cookies with Jello Frosting

Every summer my Auntie Lisa hosts a family trivia game while we're in Chelan. She often goes to this variety store that Chelan has to get a smorgasbord of prizes that we get to choose from (winners get first pick, etc). A couple summers ago I chose two boxes of Jell-O gelatin that have since been sitting in my pantry as I'm not a regular Jell-O eater. Thanks to Pinterest (and food bloggers in general), I found another way to use these up: frosted cookies! The Jell-O cookies came from I Save A to Z and the Jell-O frosting came from Coleen's Recipes.

Lemon Cutouts

For Kati I also decided to stay away from chocolate. I focused specifically on lemon since I remembered that she likes limoncello, an Italian lemon liqueur (like my mom, she has happily embraced being an Italian-by-marriage). When I came across Lemon Cutouts in a Taste of Home Best-Loved Cookies & Candies magazine, it seemed perfect: a couple years ago for my birthday, she, Anthony, Kevin, and Helen got me a set of cookie cutters but I hadn't yet had the opportunity to use them. Until now.

Lemon Poppy Seed Bread

I've never really had the popular lemon poppy seed flavor. If I'd had, it wasn't memorable. So for my next Sunday breakfast (after the waffle recipe I made in high school cooking class - one of my faves!) I decided on something lemon poppy seed flavored. I also decided on bread because I had mentioned to my family that I don't have a loaf pan and Kati said "Take some of ours! We got more than we need for wedding gifts." So I now have two loaf pans. I searched all the sources I have and finally decided on a recipe from the Joy of Baking website (I swear, this was one of the most decisive moments I've ever had. So quick to pick the flavor and type).

Lemon Brownies

I've noticed on Pinterest that lemon seems to be a popular flavor of Italian baking. While it could be argued that most of the food bloggers who call lemon cookies "Italian cookies" don't know what they're talking about, I choose to believe them since my mom and sister-in-law both love the Italian liqueur Limoncello (a.k.a. lemon). So I guess I wasn't too surprised when my mom recently told me that Anthony loves lemon. And while I was indecisive at first, I decided to make him lemon brownies for his birthday. I'd always wanted to make them so why not for my brother's birthday present?

French Macarons

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"

As a stubborn person, this is one of my mottos. Granted, there have been times when I've given up after the first try (e.g. I switched majors after failing student teaching and I gave up on my writing dream before I even considered putting my short stories together for a publisher) but those were things that I knew I realistically couldn't succeed at.

French macarons, however, are another story: I've tried 6 times to make them, usually after baking a present and I have leftover eggs.

1. May 2015: Batter was too thick; I can't even remember how. Probably because I used liquid egg whites instead of fresh egg whites.
2. June 2015: I didn't whip the egg whites long enough nor did I let the shells rest before baking them. And I used liquid egg whites.
3. February 2016: After a lot of research and a lesson from Mom (and the internet) on how to whip egg whites properly for meringue cookies, I still got the same result as in June 2015 because I didn't let the shells rest.
4. June 2016: I whipped the egg whites correctly. I let the shells rest. But when I pulled the baked shells off the parchment paper, they came apart. I think this was because I didn't let the shells cool first, something the recipe left out.
5. August 2016: I might've over-whipped the egg whites because when I was folding them into the dry ingredients, the batter became thicker and lumpier than it should have been. And it stayed that way.
6. September 2016: Success? I think so!

(It's quite possible that I had at least one other attempt but I can't seem to remember it)

Lemon-Coconut Squares

I suck at giving presents. I give something that I think will be great for the recipient but at least 90% of the time, the person ends up not using it. So for my mom's Mother's Day present, I decided on something that would be foolproof - I'd bake her something. I focused on foods with coconut in them since she's one of two people in the family who likes it. I finally settled on Lemon-Coconut Squares from the Snack Works website (mainly Nabisco products, like Oreos and Honey Maid graham crackers as well as other cookie, cracker, gum, and candy brands).

Lemon Cream Cupcakes

When I was in college my mom threw a tea party for a few years, usually around Valentine's Day. Because I was miles away, I had to miss them. Even though I don't like tea, I was a bit bummed about missing them. So when my mom decided to throw one this year, I decided I had to go. I even offered to bake (though I have a feeling she would have asked me to anyway). I decided on something not chocolate since the party was going to be during Lent and as always, I gave up chocolate. My mom asked me to make something lemony so we'd have a variety of flavors. I set my sights on looking for lemon cupcakes as I was in the mood to make them and I wanted to use one of the skills that Mom and I had learned at a Wilton decorating class we took last summer. I ended up finding the same recipe in two places: Taste of Home's Cupcakes special edition magazine from a couple years ago and my 2012 cupcakes calendar.

Savannah Smiles Zesty Lemon Streusel Bars

Last year during Girl Scout cookie season I bought two of my favorite flavors: one for eating and the other for baking with. I used the for-baking Thin Mints last year but I've been a bit stumped about what to bake with the Savannah Smiles and Tagalongs, especially the Savannah Smiles since they just came out last year. I guess I should've waited a year since last weekend I decided to bake with them and came across this recipe on the Little Brownie Bakers website for Savannah Smiles Zesty Lemon Streusel Bars (according to their About Us, they are an authorized Girl Scout cookie baking company).

Lemon Cookies

As much as I love chocolate (baking with it AND eating it), sometimes it's good to mix things up and bake something different. And if I can't bake with chocolate, I might as well bake with fruit - like lemon. Over the years I've begun to like lemon-flavored foods and that includes these lemon cookies that my mom found online last year and made for Christmas. I guess they were such a hit because she added them to our list of what to bake. I volunteered to bake them, not realizing that they'd be a little more complicated than I originally thought. No problems - just time-consuming.