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Ingredients For A Fabulous Life
raising the bar on life, one post at a time...
I adore Everything Lemon! I even have lemon tablecloths, dishtowels and a fabulous table runner! Not to mention the bowls, salad plates…
Lemons lend tons of flavor to baked goods, sauces, salad dressings, marinades, drinks, desserts, and are also a fabulous source of Vitamin C. One large lemon can provide over 30 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C to your daily nutritional requirements.
Vitamin C is essential for health, and a deficiency can lead to various health problems. You remember when you learned in grade school about the early explorers who packed citrus fruits for their long voyages to help prevent or treat scurvy.
Then there’s all the ways lemons can help us clean our homes, and even make some pampering concoctions to help beautify our face and bodies too!
Who doesn’t love the fresh scent of lemons wafting through our homes?
Make sure you try making some Lemon Powder real soon. It’s the “secret” ingredient in many of the recipes I’m sharing with you today.
Once you start drying lemon peels in your kitchen, your entire house will smell lemony fresh all day long!
Today’s post is going to show you just how many ways you can use lemons in your daily life.
Let’s get started with some lemon goodness!
You’ll need some gift tags for your lemony gifts won’t you?
These are some seriously adorable hang tags that can be used for gift giving or when you entertain at home.
I especially love to use hang tags for my bar beverages at parties.
Guests really appreciate knowing what their choices are at a self-serve beverage station.
Here the selection of Lemon Gift Hang Tags for many of the lemony items I’m sharing with you today:
I’ll tell you how to get your own Lemon Gift Hang Tags a little later in this post!
An extremely authentic Limoncello is made exclusively with lemons produced in Sorrento or Amalfi and requires 3 weeks of infusion time.
My Pink Limoncello recipe only requires 10-12 days steeping time. I find that much time produces a nicely infused alcohol mixture that turns into a killer aperitif when combined with a simple sugar syrup.
Other than the patience required to wait out the steeping time, this recipe is rather uncomplicated and fast to prepare.
You’ll just want to make sure you plan far enough ahead to start a batch for your next party or get-together.
Here’s the link to this incredibly sweet and sassy libation: Pink Limoncello
Making lemon powder is a really simple process and doesn’t require using an electric dehydrator. Your oven will work just fine, but you’ll need to watch your lemon peels a little more closely.
I personally use my dehydrator on a fairly regular basis, so the purchase price is certainly worth it for me. My Nesco machine dried 3 full racks of lemon peels in a little over 5 hours at the 135 degree setting.
I used a thin-skinned variety of lemon, but if you use a thicker skinned lemon, they’ll take a while longer to dry completely.
Once your lemon peels are totally dry, it is time to turn them into my fabulous “secret” ingredient, Lemon Powder!
Store your finished Lemon Powder in an air-tight glass container, such as in a spice container or mason jar with tight-fitting lid. A funnel really comes in handy to transfer the power into a jar without spilling.
Keep the container in a dry, cool place. When properly dried and stored, your homemade Lemon Powder will last for about a year. I personally need to make new Lemon Powder every few months or so!
Now that you’ve made your Lemon Powder, it’s time to get creative with it!
Lemons bring lots of flavor to salad dressings, marinades, baked goods, meat and vegetables.
Whether you’re adding lemon juice, zest or a Lemon Powder seasoning blend to a recipe, lemon heightens the flavor profile of everything it touches.
INSTRUCTIONS: Combine ingredients and store in a airtight container.
LEMON PEPPER SEASONING
Ingredients:
LEMON SUGAR
Ingredients:
SPARKLING LEMON SUGAR
You’ll find sparkling sugar granules in the baking section of craft stores or online. I always order mine from Amazon Prime when I’m placing an order for other items too.
I paid $8.99 for a 12 ounce bag on Amazon with free shipping. I know the price is expensive compared to plain white sugar, but a little goes a long way. Plus, it’s just so darn pretty on top of my muffins, cookies and cakes!
The Lemonburst Cookie recipe included in this post uses not only Lemon Powder, but this fabulous Sparkling Lemon Sugar too!
Ingredients:
Who doesn’t love a sweet, but tangy lemon dessert? That’s exactly what both of these lovely recipes produce!
My Lemon Powder Pound Cake recipe makes a rich, less-dense cake, with an incredibly smooth taste and larger “crumb”.
In cake baking, “crumb” refers to the interior texture and tenderness of a cake. Lemon Powder Pound Cake is not typical, in that most pound cake recipes bake into a densely textured loaf.
Part of the reason is that the recipe has instructions that are similar to muffin-making.
Over-mixing the batter when adding the dry ingredients is the enemy! Just follow the directions, and you’ll have an incredible Lemon Powder Pound Cake for dessert tonight!
The cake itself gets plenty of lemon flavor from the addition of Lemon Powder.
But the real magic of “tang” comes from the intense lemon flavor of the glaze and Candied Lemon Slice garnish.
Don’t worry, a little later I’ll be showing you how to make your own Candied Lemon Slices and Peels!
Lemonburst Cookies are just as pretty as they are delicious! This recipe too, uses the magic that is Lemon Powder, to make a cookie bursting with lemon flavor.
The prettiness comes from adding the “finishing touches” of Sparkling Lemon Sugar and sliced almonds. It’s kind of a double-whammy of lemony flavor. Sometimes it’s nice to gild the lily!
Making Candied Lemon Slices is so simple, but gives a lot of “bang for the buck” when used as a garnish.
That’s how I used them for my Lemon Powder Pound Cake recipe. After glazing the top of the cake, I laid Candied Lemon Slices in a row down the center, domino style. It really gives the cake a little “wow” factor, doesn’t it?
The process is identical for making Candied Lemon Peels, except that you will slice the peels into strips before adding them to the boiling simple sugar syrup.
The fabulous “extra” to this process is the Lemon Syrup you’ll end up with after the lemons are finished.
It’s full of lemon flavor from the essential oils released from the lemon slices and peels as they give up their water content and absorb the sugar syrup.
HERE’S THE SIMPLE PROCESS TO MAKE CANDIED LEMON SLICES AND PEELS:
Both these lemony beauty treatments are perfect for gift giving too! Pamper your BFF’s with two fabulous “spa day” treats as a special way to show then how much you care!
Don’t forget to download and print out your Lemon Gift Hang Tags for Lemon-Peppermint Foot Scrub and Lemony Lip Gloss for the perfect “finish” to your gifts!
LEMON-PEPPERMINT FOOT SCRUB
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Mix all ingredients in a small bowl and store in a sterilized 8 ounce glass or plastic jar with a tight fitting lid. Mixture will last about 2 weeks, or longer if kept in the refrigerator between uses.
To Use Lemon-Peppermint Foot Scrub:
Rub mixture into your wet feet with your hands or a pumice stone, spending some extra times around your heels. Rinse off with clean, warm water, dry, apply foot cream and don a clean pair of cotton socks to lock in the moisture.
LEMONY LIP GLOSS
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Place the coconut oil, beeswax and honey in a small saucepan over low heat. Once the beeswax has completely melted, remove pan from heat and stir in the sweet almond oil.
Place the pan in an ice bath (large bowl with ice and water in bottom). Whisk the mixture until the lip gloss has emulsified and “sets up”. (1-2 minutes)
Put the finished Lemony Lip Gloss in a clean, sterile container with a tight-fitting lid for up to 6 months.
If you’re making lemon desserts, spice blends or beauty treatments, you’ll find yourself with lots of leftover lemon “stuff”. No doubt you’ll have accumulated a pile of lemon halves, peels and flesh that you don’t really want to toss in the trash bin.
Here’s a fabulous way to use them and end up with a “green” cleaning solution that works even better than chemicals and detergents.
Lemon-Rosemary Cleaning Spritz is so simple to make and incredibly effective, you’ll never throw away a lemon rind again!
It’s safe to use in the kitchen, bathroom and I especially love to use it when cleaning my refrigerator! It really gets rid of any odors and crud that’s accumulated since the last cleaning. (and with me, that could be months)
SUPPLIES –
INSTRUCTIONS –
If you want even more lemony goodness, I’ve got two more recipes to share with you! Both are perfect for entertaining at home any time of year.
The first is a fabulous and handy hostess hack that makes throwing a party a little easier. The second is a great snack to have with cocktails (or even add them to your martinis!).
Lemon Drop Cocktail Mixer by the Pitcher with Recipe PDF makes up a big batch of the mixer to easily prepare Lemon Drops by the Pitcher to serve a crowd.
But if the gang loves their martini’s, then having this delicious snack hanging around your refrigerator will always be a hit.
Easy Lemony Marinated Olives are so simple and fast to prepare, I try to always have a batch in the refrigerator. They’re especially nice to have handy around the holidays and for Summer entertaining! They keep like a dream and taste even better after they’ve had some time to “sit around”.
If you weren’t convinced that lemons are one of the most versatile foods in the world, I bet you are now!
I’ve shared with you some incredible lemon desserts, spice blends, beauty treatments and even an herby-lemon cleaner. How much harder can one little lemon work?
I hope you’ll try some or maybe all of the uses for the incredible fruit that are LEMONS!
I want you to be able to give lots of lemony gifts this season! So I’ve created these fabulous hang tags for all the recipes I’ve given in this post! How fun is that?
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