Lemon-Poppyseed Bread: An Improvised Recipe

I'm not much of a chocolate fan, a fact that baffles my husband and many of my friends. It's not that I don't like chocolate—on a cold winter day, there is nothing like hot chocolate (unless it's hot, homemade soup).

But I don't crave it above all other edibles. It's just that I like other things better—like lemon.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried a new-to-me recipe from a whole grains cookbook from a great Vermont-based business, King Arthur Flour (www.KingArthurFlour.com) that's located just north of us in Norwich. Among other ingredients, the recipe called for softened sweet butter (unsalted). Now this is something you have to plan for, softened butter, and at that point, I had the time so I let a stick sit on the counter for 30 minutes, and we were good to go.

But this past Sunday, my husband, son and I found ourselves together at home for the first time in a month, the house really needed a good cleaning (we get lax when there's so much to do outside) so we cleaned because it is much quicker with three of us involved. We call it the "divide and conquer" cleaning method.

The problem was, Jay and I were due at a strawberry party that friends of ours hold every year in June, I forgot to take butter out of the fridge, and time was growing short.

So I hurtled around in my other cookbooks and found a different King Art recipe in my old standby—The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook. Honestly, if you love to bake at all, this is a classic. Their PDQ muffins and One-Pan Cakes are so worth the price of the book.

Anyway, I found a lemon bread recipe calling for melted butter (yay!) and adapted other parts of it to fit the ingredients I'd already assembled including my absolutely most favorite yogurt in the world, Butterworks Farm Lemon Non-Fat. (This is another great Vermont business, sustainable, wind-powered and organic. Check them out here: www.ButterworksFarm.com)

Here's the new-classic recipe for Lemon Poppyseed Bread.

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 teaspoon lemon or orange extract

1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about what you get from one lemon)

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups King Arthur unbleached flour (hey, it's an adaptation of their recipe!)

1 teaspoon baking powder (be sure to buy aluminum-free)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup Butterworks Farm Non-Fat Lemon Yogurt (or other plain or lemon yogurt)

grated rind of one lemon

1/4 cup poppyseeds

Mix the melted butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, extract, lemon juice, lemon rind and poppyseeds. Add the yogurt then the baking powder and salt. Mix well then add the flour and stir until all the flour is moistened.

Grease a loaf pan, fill it with the batter (it's thick) and pop into a 375 degree oven for 50 to 55 minutes.

After you take it out of the oven, let it sit in the pan for at least 20 minutes. Then slide a butter knife around the edge of the pan and take the bread out.

Serve warm plain or with butter. Also awesome with slice strawberries.