I remember being in the fancy grocery store when I was young and seeing a bottle of lemon zest sitting on the shelf and wondering why the heck someone would ever want to eat a lemon peel. When I was slightly older and had to cook for myself I saw one or two recipes that called for lemon zest and thought to myself, okay, so lemon peels are edible, but how could someone possibly justify buying a whole bottle of it?

In the last couple of weeks I've made a few recipes with either lemon or orange zests - blueberry pies, lemon creme scones, orange tofu - and I had completely forgotten that prepackaged zest existed. I ended up running out to the store every time and buying a whole lemon or orange. Then tonight I saw recipe for Madeleine's. They make Madeleine's at my work, and charge a pretty penny for 'em. But from the recipe and description it looks like you could whip them up pretty fast and impress a guest or two. Oh, and they require lemon zest. It turns out there are hundreds of recipes with zest in them (at least 175 according to this book), and you can still buy the stuff for a pretty penny.

Labels: cooking, lemon zest