I know it’s been over a month, but when Mother’s Day was upon us, I decided I’d prepare supper for my mom instead of taking her out to eat.

My brother was going to be there, along with with our son, Daniel, and our daughter-in-law, Katelyn, which was an excellent opportunity to try out some new recipes.

Lemon Tea Bread

INGREDIENTS

— 1/2 cup milk

— 2 eggs

— 1 cup of sugar

— 1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted

— 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

— 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

— 1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder

— 1 teaspoon salt

— 1/2 cup chopped pecanscheese

Glaze

— 1/4 cup sugar

— 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 8 1/2x 4 1/2 loaf pans; set aside.

In large mixer bowl combine milk, eggs, sugar, butter or margarine, and lemon peel. Beat at medium speed until well blended. Add dry ingredients, beat at low speed until moist and the mixture is smooth. Fold in pecans. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Meanwhile, combine sugar and lemon juice for glaze. Place bread, still in pan on a wire rack to cool.

Slowly pour on the glaze while the bread is still hot. Let stand 10 minutes in the pan, remove the bread and cool completely on wire rack.

It makes about 16 1/2-inch slices — about 165 calories per slice.

I’ve told you before that my mom loves lemon desserts, so I started looking through my stash of recipes for anything lemony.

I found two recipes, one for a lemon chess pie that I’d just written down at some point, and this recipe for Lemon Tea Bread, which was in a large bag of recipes that some nice lady provided last year.

She didn’t give me her name; she left her collection of recipes at The Winchester Sun office for me.

It appeared she had cut the recipe from a magazine, but I have no idea which magazine.

On Saturday afternoon, I prepared the lemon tea bread recipe step by step.

It took two small lemons to have enough zest for the bread batter and three small lemons to have enough lemon juice for the glaze.

Of course, I squeezed the two lemon’s I’d zested earlier for the majority of the juice needed for the glaze. I’m sure you have already guessed that I chose to use pecans where the recipe called for chopped nuts.

The bread finished after 50 minutes, and while it was still hot, I poured the glaze on top, let it cool for a bit and then removed it from the pan.

Next, I started on the lemon chess pie. I have no earthly idea where this recipe originated as it was on a yellow post-it note.

Lemon Chess Pie

INGREDIENTS

— 6 eggs

— 2 cups of sugar

— 1/2 cup lemon juice

— 1/2 stick melted butter

— 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch

— Dash of salt

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Combine ingredients and pour into a deep-dish pie crust.

Bake 35 — 45 minutes.

Before putting the pie filling together, I prepared a homemade crust and placed it in one of my many pie plates.

Yes, I have several pie plates because I enjoy making pies.

The filling was easy to prepare. To avoid lumps, I combined the sugar, cornstarch, and salt, then I added the eggs and stirred the mixture a little.

I didn’t have enough fresh lemon juice, so I used bottled instead for this recipe.

I melted the butter in the microwave and poured it into the mixture and give everything a good stir, making sure everything was combined well.

I filled the pie crust with the filling and then put it in the oven. It smelled pretty good while it was baking and after about 40 minutes I peeked into the oven.

It wasn’t ready, so I let it go 10 more minutes. Perfect.

During our meal on Mother’s Day, everyone had a good appetite, so I mentioned there were two desserts so they might want to save room for them.

Shortly after everyone was finished eating, I asked if anyone even wanted something sweet and, not to my surprise, they all said sure.

Everyone tried both desserts, and both got good reviews.

My mom’s favorite of the two was the lemon chess pie. She said it was because it had more lemon flavor than the tea bread.

However, my brother and son both liked the lemon tea bread better; they said the blueberry cheesecake ice cream scooped on top put it over the top. I liked both desserts equally. Brad loved the tea bread better because it wasn’t as sweet as pie.

Overall, Mother’s Day was a success, and so were these two recipes. Both will go into my self-made cookbook.

By the way, I made a lemon chess pie with berry sauce not too long ago, and this one beat’s it. The prior one will lose its place in the cookbook in favor of this one. I’m sure that berry sauce will go just as well with this version of lemon chess pie.

Sarah Condley is an amateur baker and chef who is compiling a cookbook of her favorite recipes.