Homemade Limoncello

Limoncello is an Italian lemon liqueur made from liquor, lemon zest, sugar and water.

Up until now, I had never tried limoncello, but since reading about how easy it is to make, I've been wanting to try for a few years now. So, I stopped procrastinating and made a double batch to give away as Christmas gifts this year.

This liqueur is quite simple to make and was well worth the zesting/peeling of 16 lemons.

Ingredients

16 lemons

1.5 liters of vodka

1.5 liters of sugar syrup (see below note)

lemon leaves (optional)

Purchase a 1.75 liter bottle of good vodka. Reserve (or drink) .25 liters.

Zest the lemons, making sure not to get any of the white peel, which will impart bitterness. Matt used the zester and I used a knife to shave off the peel (his way was more efficient, but hey, we only have 1 zester). Put the zest into the 1.5 liters of vodka, seal, and store in a dark place for at least 1 week.

After 1 week, make your sugar syrup. Heat the sugar and water until all sugar has dissolved and the mixture is clear. We used a 1:1 mixture of sugar, water, but next time I think I would do only 25% sugar. The total volume of sugar syrup should add up to 1.5 liters.

Mix this in with your lemony vodka and strain.

Pour into bottles and store refrigerated.

If you desire to tuck a few lemon leaves into the bottle (we used some from our tree out back), blanch first by dunking into boiling water for 10 seconds and then running cold water over the leaves to stop the cooking process.

It was nice to have a homemade gift to give away to friends at the Holidays. The liqueur turned out quite tasty as well. Although strong and sweet, it is drinkable straight. You can also mix with club soda and mint for a refreshing "lemonade". On New Year's Eve, Matt mixed some with ginger ale. The flavor was great (kinda like a lemon head), but entirely too sweet. That is why next time I think we'll cut back on the sugar. We would also like to try again soon with oranges and grapefruit since they are season.

Enjoy!

Bake-A-Long #3: Lemon Luxury Cake

Oh lemon curd, how I love thee, let me count the ways...

1. Butter

2. Lemon

3. Egg yolks

As individual foods, these may not be all that great to eat, but put them together and you get something quite tasty. That is why I made this cake. Well, that and the picture that accompanies the recipe (if only mine would have turned out that pretty). This cake requires multiple steps, none too difficult, but slightly time consuming. It is best to make it in stages. I made the lemon curd the night before to allow for the required cooling period. I always forget how long it takes to cook lemon curd when I'm making it. I had to keep telling Baxley the puppy "I'm almost done, try to hold it just a few minutes longer...". Thirty minutes later, I was done, and thankfully, he was able to hold it.

Sunday afternoon, I started the white chocolate custard for the butter cream. At first, I thought I may have gotten the white chocolate too hot when melting it with the butter, as it was grainy in appearance, but once I whisked in the eggs, everything came together. This was cooked to 140 F. It thickened slightly but was still fairly runny when complete.

While the custard was cooling, I baked the cakes. No surprises here, it was a straightforward recipe. The recipe called for superfine sugar, which is not available at my grocery store. The book suggests to lightly grind granulated sugar as a substitution. I skipped this step and used regular granulated sugar. My only problem was that I think I slightly over baked the cakes. While the cakes were cooling, I made the buttercream. Buttercream, like the curd, also always takes longer to make than I remember (lots of mixing).

Matt, having more patience than me, volunteered to cut the cakes in half and frost them. Thanks Matt, job well done. The lemon curd did not go all that far, we could have used a little more for filling.

I forgot to mention, I used Ghirardelli white chocolate for the cake and custard, as this is the only brand I could find, therefore, I did not have the vanilla seeds present in my frosting that the recipe calls for.

I will take credit for the final touch of lemon curd dots. Dots are the old standby for my amateur cake decorating skills.

Luckily, Ashlie the sister invited us over for dinner Sunday night so I had somewhere to bring my cake. It was enjoyed by all.

One note that I would like to make is, weighing the eggs does make a significant difference. For both the curd and the cake, I had to add more yolk or whole egg than suggested to achieve the correct weight. This is the perfect cookbook to use as scale with, as all the recipes are given in volume and weight measurements. I highly recommend using one. It makes for less dishes too, which is very important when you don't have a dishwasher in your home!

I'm not sure if I would make this cake again. I do think I will test out using key limes instead of lemons in it one day. We planted a key lime tree in our yard this summer, so this will be added to the list of things to make with our key limes whenever the tree fruits. This ends my post on lemon luxury cake, as I have a piece in the fridge calling my name.