I love anything that has lemon in it, especially cake. I have a fabulous recipe for lemon cake from my childhood in Jamaica, but it requires lemon jello mix and I didn’t have any so I ended up trying out a new recipe. It calls for fresh lemon juice and lemon zest and I was excited to try it but my excitement was short-lived because I had a very different outcome than I expected. I wouldn’t call it a disaster, but the cake didn’t rise and was about the size and weight of a doorstop (okay, actually that does sound disastrous). It had the consistency of cornbread, but the sweetness of lemon and I had no idea what to do with it until my son suggested we toast it. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

The original recipe calls for a glaze that consists of fresh lemon juice and powdered sugar, but I wanted to change it up and combine it with a great tangy blueberry sauce, served warm. I cut it into slices, toasted it and put the blueberry sauce on the side for dunking. I have no idea what I did wrong, but we felt good about figuring out a way to transform it into something delicious and unexpected.

Tips for zesting success!

For zesting, I have two microplanes. I use the narrow one for small fruits.

Wash and dry the fruit, then hold the fruit at an angle and slide it down the microplane being careful to keep fingers away. The blades on the microplane only face one direction.

You only want the peel of the fruit which contains all the essential oils. It typically takes only one pass of the microplane.

I had some help juicing the lemons.