2. Go shopping hungry; buy shit-ton of produce. The farmers market people in Culver City are apparently too plebian to offer Meyer lemons. The Beverly Hills market always has stuff like this (but also tons of bleached-blonde bitches with strollers). Luckily, Trader Joe's provides.
3. At cooking time, discover that you don't actually have a muffin tin. Rather than take boyfriend's suggestion that you go out and buy one, silly, decide to do it as a loaf. You do have a loaf pan!
4. Gather the goodies:
5. Empty out your only mixing bowl, which you use to put fruit and tomatoes in.
6. Put the dry ingredients into it.
7. Chop two of your three lemons into "one-inch pieces." Since it was all going into the food processor anyway, I decided to redefine inch to "whatever size was easiest for me."
8. Dump into tiny food processor and whirl until "finely chopped."
9. At this point, boyfriend will point out that he could help, rather than [implicit part of the statement] constantly having his attempts to read Wonkette interrupted by your going back to his computer all the time to look at the recipe. So he helps by beating the eggs and combining them with milk and chunky lemon soup.
Please note that while the recipe says you should put the butter in with that stuff, that assumes, incorrectly in my case, that you own two bowls bigger than a cereal bowl. The butter would not fit. Therefore, it proceeded separately to the next step...
10. ...which was to make a well in the middle of the dry stuff and mix in the wet stuff. They suggested that you don't need to mix it that much, but as your boyfriend will point out, you have to be sure that the dry stuff gets completely mixed. Glass bowls are good for this.
11. Dump it all in the loaf pan! Ignore your instinct that says it'll spill over the top! It doesn't, but your boyfriend will point out that "it's gonna rise like a motherfucka."
12. Sprinkle refined sugar on top, but if you're doing a loaf, you don't need nearly as much as they call for. Then sprinkle on cinnamon.
A note on the cinnamon: they call for Ceylon cinnamon. That's subtly different and probably more expensive than the normal cinnamon we all put in our pumpkin pies. I live KINDA near Surfas, but if I can't be bothered getting a muffin tin from the grocery store two blocks away, I certainly can't be bothered to actually get into my car and drive somewhere. It probably does taste better with lemons, and I look forward to the time when I break down and buy some.
13. The final step is cutting your third and final lemon into "paper-thin slices", then cutting those slices in half. Again, I used a generous definition of paper-thin, though I did try my best. We can't all be Bone. The recipe doesn't call for sprinkling more sugar on top, but I tried it, just to see if it would help the lemons caramelize.
14. Pull dinner out of oven; replace with loaf pan into oven. Take turns with boyfriend licking remaining batter off spoon. You are both almost thirty. It tastes divine.
15. To nobody's surprise, the muffin loaf is not nearly done after the 20 minutes the muffins called for. It will take more like an hour. Periodically, stick head in oven and insert a clean knife into the center to check for doneness. Lick knives.
16. Loaf is done when boyfriend says it's starting to look a little too brown around the edges. Miraculously, the middle seems to be cooked. Endure deserved teasing from boyfriend about reluctance to buy muffin tins.
17. Feed muffin loaf to friend who just returned from trip to Europe. She has no complaints. Mwahahahaha!
P.S. I have discovered that I hate Blogger's default interface.
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