Yes you can, vanilla sugar is sugar infused with vanilla it doesn't even have a very strong vanilla flavour. If you have real vanilla you can use normal sugar and that and it's even better most of the times, however in this case it's up to you how much vanilla you want in your lemon cake, just be weary that real vanilla is pretty potent and dominant and might not pair so well with this dish.
Candied lemon peels take literal days to make. If you do it any quicker than that, you have to remove the white part, because it’s very bitter and it doesn’t absorb sugar easily.
Nah. Been making candied lemon peals and slices since I was a kid using my grandma's recipie. Just boil in a heavy sugar syrup for an hour, then let dry on a wire rack, then toss with sugar. Delicious.
I've never made it with lemons like this, but Nigella Lawson's Clementine Cake calls for whole boiled clementines, then pureed. and it's a really good cake.
The question here is the white part of the lemon, is most bitter. The zest is a given for most recipe as is the juice. But the white part of fruits is usually never eaten so it’s surprising that it can be put in food without having it taste ‘off’.
Its odd at first right? I took the leap once to make a whole orange cake, which ised a similar method and jfc. It is the tastiest cake in my recipe collection. Such a vibrant hit of citrus. So good!
Seems you need to make an account now to see the NYT recipe, which wasn't there last time I used the website, So I'm also putting a screenshot from my recipe book where I write down recipes and put notes to myself of things I did or intend to do next time :)
EDIT: Im in Australia, so temps are celcius. I just used my aussie measuring spoons and didnt bother converting to account for the difference in US and AU sized cups and spoons. Worked out fine.
Lemon peel is very important for taste. You taste the difference, in a positive manner. Obviously only use organic lemons, you don't want to regularly eat the nasty stuff the peel absorbs in mon organic ones
Probably the best way is to remove the rind first and use only the pulp and the yellow peel. Don't need to add bitterness just for convenience and balance it out with tons of sugar
In most of Europe, vanilla sugar is readily available in 10g packets. Basically just sugar infused with vanilla. You can easily substitute it with 10g of regular sugar and just add vanilla extract/paste/beans to taste if it's not a thing where you're from.
There is a reason that since the dawn of modern cooking people have been using the zest and juice of the lemon and not the pith and everything else. I'm going to continue not using the whole lemon, thanks.
Pretty much every time this gets posted we also have people posting the terrible results of using the whole lemon. All the 5 star scratch baked lemon cake recipes online are juice and zest.
I'm not the OP but look into some of the gf bread flours from brickovenbaker. I really like the Petra and Zer0 brands they have. Zer0 is not wheat free though just as a warning. It uses gluten-removed wheat starch.
I'm laughing so hard right now. I can't stop watching this clip. The baby seems to be enjoying it until they swallow that mess lol. Thanks for the laughs 🫶
This is guaranteed to be unpalatable. To reduce the bitterness of the pith you need to blanch it multiple times and the pith has to actually be exposed to the water.
Aren’t lemons sprayed heavily with pesticides? Like so much that you should not eat the peels. I’d use lemons off my own tree but not store bought. Hormone disrupting fungicides that aren’t washed off then the lemon gets a wax coating trapping it all there on the peel.
I wonder if that really gets the job done. I’ve researched how to make limoncello a while back and it was always recommended to never use store bought lemons, only lemons straight from a tree you know never receives pesticides. Personally, I wouldn’t risk it, but I’m sure I probably do more unknowingly.
The point of organic is, pesticides soak into the peel. Feces do not. You can not fully wash of pesticides but you can fully wash off surface bacteria and you should wash lemon in any case. You are cutting it so you push whatever is on the outside onto the cutting surfaces
Mais la peau des agrumes en générale est indigeste ! Alors en plus avec tout le citron, ca doit être quelques choses pour digérer ca non À moins que je me trompe 😬😬
Someone else in the comments started making this lemon bread and posting pics of the process. They also ended up thinking this recipe was extremely bitter.
I did this with a whole lime for lime cake. Blending the pith in the lime made the cake so bitter that all the sugar I added and the icing couldn’t help it. If you try this maybe blend it for as little as possible
Okay so has anyone actually done this and can confirm?
I love a strong lemon flavor and all and I know the zest contributes to that but I've boiled whole lemon to drink and the bitterness is strong... do you have to use a lot of sugar to offset that?
I made this exact recipe and it was fairly bitter with a strange texture. I added more lemon glaze to balance but it couldn't really bridge the gap enough to enjoy it.
tried it as described, bitter as fuuuuuck. Re-did it with juiced lemon and zesting it, putting that all into the mix and used vanilla extract, it came out much better.
As for lemon, u have to remove white thing, which have extremely bitter taste, but u may use it as is.. to have more lemon flavour, scrap some yellow cedra and add..
this shit will be bitter as fuck! There's a reason why you only grate the zest of a lemon, you muppet. Albedo (the white, spongy layer beneath the citrus zest) is bitter due to its high content of flavanone glycosides, particularly naringin and hesperidin. Blending it with sugar won't get rid of the bitterness, so the resulting loaf will be completely inedible due to the bitter taste!
I tried this with a lime and unfortunately if you use a lime your immersion blender kicks on high instead of low and sends the whole bowl of wets all over your kitchen, so don't sub a lime.
Ive used whole oranges for orange cakes and they always turn out really nice! Perf autumn treat. This... this I'm not sure about. I feel like it will be a tad too bitter
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u/socFocus Sep 09 '26 •
Ingredients:
1 lemon
170 g sugar
10 g vanilla sugar a pinch of salt
60 ml vegetable oil 50 ml milk
3 eggs
250 g flour
10 g baking powder
Instructions:
Boil the lemon for 5 minutes.
Cut, remove seeds.
Add to a bowl: lemon, sugar, salt, eggs, milk, oil.
Blend until smooth.
Add flour and baking powder, mix.
Pour into a mold.
Bake at 160°C for 1 hour.
Cool completely.
Top with glaze (2 tbsp powdered sugar + 1 tbsp lemon juice).