Meyer Lemon

As we enter the depths of winter (although winter is a relative term in Austin at times since it has gotten up to the 70s already), containers of Meyer lemons have been appearing in the grocery store. One of my ice cream books had a recipe for a Meyer lemon frozen so I decided to give that a try.

Rating: 4 scoops

I really liked this flavor combination with the sweetness of the Meyer lemon and chewy tanginess of the yogurt. It has also been a while since I've made a frozen yogurt so this was a nice change of pace.

This frozen yogurt melted really quickly though (which you can see in the picture above). When I first started making frozen yogurts, they were very firm and difficult to scoop cleanly. My most recent ones have been soft and I'm not sure what has changed other than possibly the yogurt. This recipe used Fage single-serving cups while I know I've used Chobani before. A quick comparison of the nutritional labels show that Fage has less fat, sugars, and protein than the Chobani, but I'm not sure why that leads to faster melting. Some experimentation may be needed.

I'm not sure I've ever used a Meyer lemon before, which is part of the reason I was excited to try this frozen yogurt. Meyer lemons, a cross between a mandarin orange and regular lemon, are sweeter and have a thinner skin compared to regular lemons. I tried some of the Meyer lemon in water and the flavor difference is very noticeable. While I didn't have many extras, I think that Meyer lemons would make a delicious lemon curd on top of this sherbet!

To make this frozen yogurt, the lemons were used in two places: the juice was mixed with the yogurt and zest infused in the hot base. When I was zesting the lemon, it was amazing how fragrant it was - more so than a normal lemon. As the zest was infusing into the base, the floral flavor was wafting all over my kitchen.

I also acquired a new tool to help make ice creams: a chinois strainer. This will be helpful for straining the base a final time before it cures overnight. In this case, it caught all of the lemon zest and allowed the rest of the base to easily go through instead of slowing down due to the bulky zest at the bottom.

This frozen yogurt was inspired by Hello, My Name is Ice Cream.