I can be a picky brat about eating out, especially at casual chain restaurants, but Lemonade is one you won’t find me fussing about. I swear, we grab food there at least once a week. The Gemini in me adores all the quality options, and I love delicious and varied ways of enjoying my veggies with minimal fuss. A six-portion salad and a lemonade to share is perfectly sized for a lunch date!
When I saw the Lemonade cookbook at checkout one day, I knew it would be coming home with me. Having tested it in the kitchen, I wanted to share some thoughts on a few recipes I tried in this installment of Cookbook Chronicles.
Going for the namesake, I had to make a lemonade. The key to the tart richness of their lemonades is a freshly made thick fruit purée. With so many flavor options, I chose pear basil lemonade (page 231), which I’ve never seen onsite. Pears are incredible this time of year, and I love the herbaceous flavor of basil in sweets, so this was a major hit for me.
Unfotunately, the corn chowder (page 171) was not nearly as good. I went for the Malibu clambake variation, which included seafood stock and clams, but the soup was bland and watery and just kindof boring. We tried topping it with smoked paprika, pickled red onions, jalepenos, and each helped, but nothing could fully save this soup.
Black bottom cheesecake brownies (page 201) are my favorite treat from the dessert case at Lemonade, and I’m a big fan of the chocolate-cheesecake flavor combo in general. But I found this recipe really disappointing- the batter wanted to be clumpy, despite the tedious method, and the finished products were tougher than I’d like. For a chocolate cheesecake craving, I’d rather point you to Smitten Kitchen’s cheesecake marbled brownies for fat superior deliciousness for much less time and effort anyway.
I tend to skip over cookies for more elaborate sweets, but I made these Oatmeal-Golden Raisin Cookies (page 189) over the holidays and they were really yummy. I love golden raisins, and they were lovely bursts of sweetness in these tender, chewy cookies.
When I first saw the coconut cake (page 206) in the desert case, I was all heart-eyed over the coconut-milk-soaked layers, but they somehow managed to be both dry and sticky… I thought they might have been serving it a day past its prime. I felt certain I could do better at home, and I did. The barely sweetened frosting balanced the sweeter cake and filling nicely, though I did substitute half the sugared coconut shreds in the topping with unsweetened coconut flakes.
So it’s been a little hit-or-miss as far as experimenting, but I’m certainly liking having the recipes on hand to some of my favorite salads and homemade dressings. I’m pretty sure more than a few Lemonade recipes will be making it in to the regular mealtime rotation.
loveRavayna
