The Lemon Drop

Or, when life gives you lemons...

What better way to usher in the long weekend than with a refreshing beverage.  I recommend our friend, The Lemon Drop.  I do love lemons, and happen to have a stash still hanging on my tree in the backyard.  

I know, I know - lucky me!

I'm posting this as my first installment in Friend's Faves.  That's because my friends and I, we know how to make this baby the right way.  There's a right way, and there's a wrong way.  The right way involves merely 3 ingredients - 4 if you count ice.  No more, no less.   I'm not kidding.

Cheers and happy Memorial Day weekend!

The Lemon Dropper's Lemon Drop

Makes One

juice of one fresh lemon

one generous shot Citron vodka

one T. superfine sugar

Shake in ice-filled shaker till good and frosty.

Strain into a sugar-rimmed martini glass.

Cheers!

If you can't make it... don't fake it.

Aunt Charlotte's Bread Pudding

                                      

What's so great about bread pudding?  Well, let me tell you.  This is comfort food at it's finest.  So simple.  So yummy.  Humble, almost always on hand, ingredients. Feeds a small crowd.  If you've never tried it, trust me, you will want to do so as quickly as possible.  

Adding fresh lemon sauce and a few berries means bread pudding gets to come out and play in the summer.  Or, you can drizzle a little rum sauce over it for an instant seasonal wardrobe change.  Every time I make this somebody asks for the recipe, so I thought it would be the perfect next installment in my Family Faves series. 

This is how it's done...

Humble Ingredients: 

One loaf french bread. 

3 T. melted butter

4 cups milk

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

Tear the bread into pieces and put in buttered 9x13.

Mix butter and sugar.  Add milk, eggs, vanilla.  Pour over bread and let it soak it.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Seriously.  Could that be any easier??

While it's baking, make a batch of lemon sauce or rum sauce.  They are both divine, so I suggest the Labor Day rule.  After Labor Day, go with the rum sauce.  Before Labor Day, it's lemon all the way.

Lemon Sauce
Whisk in small saucepan:
     3/4 c. sugar
     5 T. cornstarch
Add:
     1 1/2 c. boiling water
Cook over med-hi heat till thickened.
Remove from heat and whisk in:
     4 T. fresh lemon juice
     2 T. lemon zest
     1 T. butter

Rum Sauce (not pictured)
1 c. sugar
1 stick butter
1 sm. carton whipping cream
1 shot rum
Combine in sauce pan and heat, stirring, till sugar melts.


Thank you, Aunt Charlotte.  Hope you don't mind my poaching and posting your family favorite.  Love ya!