When life gives you lemons - part 1

My new country life in Featherston gave me more than my fair share of lemons! More lemons than I can cope with.

The lemon tree - misleading from the outside, but look under the branches and it's lemons from heaven

I made a valiant attempt to harvest them on Monday, but after tripping up over my own feet and grazing my knee pretty badly on the concrete path, I gave up for the day. Instead I washed the lemons I had already picked, which turned out to be a pretty reasonable haul – around 15kg worth, though it didn't make a dent to the crop still left on the tree.

Picked lemons and after washing

Lady Lemon

On Tuesday, my friend Caroline, aka Lady Lemon came up from Wellington for the day. After meeting her at the train station, stopping for morning tea at a local cafe and going on a walking tour of town we spent the rest of the day cooking up lemony goodness in my kitchen.

Caroline baked us a yummy lemon coconut cake and I set up about juicing as many lemons as I could to use later. Caroline was very envious of my tree and left for the train with a backpack full of lemons and lemon juice to use in her curd making.

Lemon and coconut cake

• 250g melted butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• 1 lemon zest and juice (2 if using Meyer lemons)
• 1 cup milk
• 3 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line cake or slice tin.

Place butter and sugars into large bowl and beat until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Gradually add the flour, coconut, milk, vanilla and lemon juice and zest and mix well until well combined.

Pour mixture into baking tin and bake for around 30 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean.  Allow to cool in tin before turning out.

Serve as is with cream or ice with a cream cheese icing or simple glace icing using lemon juice.

Lemon Coconut Cake