I often find myself with leftover lemon, lime and orange after zesting them for a recipe and I never know what to do with them. It always seems like recipes call for zest only, or more zest than juice, so I imagine this is a common problem for bakers! In order to resolve this problem and avoid food waste guilt I've had a scout around and collected together some recipes that use only the juice of citrus fruits. It took me a while to find recipes that don't need zest at all, but I've found a good selection.
Lemons
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| Lemon Vinaigrette | Lemon Sugar Cookies | Lemon Bars |
| Uses 2 tbsp Lemon Juice | Uses the Juice of 1 Lemon | Uses 85ml Lemon juice |
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| Lemon Curd | Lemon Cream Pie | Lemon Meringue Pie |
| Uses 125ml Lemon Juice | Uses 210ml Lemon Juice | Uses 250ml Lemon Juice |
Limes
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| Key Lime Cheesecake | Pina Colada Fruit Jellies | Banana Mango Muffins with Lime Glaze |
| Uses 175ml Lime Juice (about 3 Limes) | Uses 3 tsp Lime Juice | Uses ½ a Lime Juice plus 1 tsp |
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| Chocolate Covered Lime Cheesecake Bites | Coconut Lime Cheesecake Bars | |
| Uses 60ml Lime Juice | Uses 4 tbsp Lime Juice |
Oranges
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| Blueberry Orange Juice Bread | Apple Crepes with Orange Sauce | Peach Romanoff |
| Uses 175ml Orange Juice | Uses 175ml Orange Juice (plus 2 ½ tsp Lemon Juice!) | Uses 6 tbsp Orange Juice |
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| Sicilian Orange Almond Cake | Baked Cinnamon Bananas with Orange Juice | |
| Uses 75ml Orange Juice | Uses 40ml Orange Juice |
Let me know in the comments if you make any of these recipes and how they turn out!
How much juice is in a citrus fruit?
There is approx 30ml juice in a Lemon
There is approx 30ml juice in a Lime
There is approx 80ml juice in an Orange
Other ideas for leftover citrus fruits...
- Mix leftover lemon juice with avocado for avocado on toast
- Squeeze lime over a thai curry, stir fry or asian style soup
- Add your citrus juice to a smoothie
- Make a salad dressing using lemon, lime or orange juice
- Pop a wedge or slice into your drink, or get cocktail making!
- Mix any citrus juice with enough icing sugar to make a runny icing, then drizzle over a cake
- Add to homemade ice lollies (popsicles)
- You can freeze the juice in ice cube trays for easy portion control, and add to drinks and cocktails in the future
- Clean with it! Lemon in particular is a fantastic natural cleaner
More leftover ideas...
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| Jam | Wholemeal Flour | Egg yolks |
Kate Glutenfreealchemist
Ha! Yep.... those zestless citrus fruit are a problem in our house too. I have two bald lemons sitting in the fridge right now!!
Kat BakingExplorer
It's a constant issue for me! Putting them in a cocktail (or mocktail) always works well if there's no time to bake!
Kennie S.
Thank you for sharing this! We homemade a lemon cake for my Dad's birthday and had 2.5 zested and 2 un-zested lemons leftover. Most recipes call for only or mostly zest, so I was happy to find your list here. I have the blueberry orange (in this case, lemon) bread in the oven now, which used up those zested lemons, and I may use the remaining two lemons to make the lemon sugar cookies.
thebakingexplorer
That's awesome Kennie, I'm so glad this helped you!