Serendipity: the occurrence and development of
events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
About a month ago one of my husband's
coworkers brought into work bags of lemons from his prolific lemon tree. So
we ended up with 2 dozen lemons. With some of the lemons I made
preserved lemons and the rest of the lemons were destined to be
limoncello.
I tucked the mason jar full of
lemon peels and vodka in the back corner of one of my kitchen cabinets and then
promptly forgot about it....until I saw that the next recipe was for
limoncello cupcakes and I knew it was meant to be.
I finished making the
limoncello and then got to work on the cupcakes. Sugar, flour, and lemon
zest go into a bowl, and to my surprise so does cardamom.
You know how sometimes you smell
something and you are instantly transported back in time, to another event. The
smell and the moment are intrinsically link together. Whenever I
smell cardamom I am immediately brought back to the time I spent in
Jordan. Cardamom coffee is popular throughout the Middle East, where they grind
pods of cardamom in with their coffee beans making the most delicious
smelling coffee. So when I opened the jar of cardamom for the
briefest of moments I was right back in Jordan, standing in front of a
sidewalk coffee stand, sipping cardamom coffee and being lost in a world that
was not mine own...but just like that I was back in my kitchen on a quiet
Tuesday morning making boozy cupcakes.
Since neither my husband nor my 5
year old drinks I decided to take the boozy cupcakes with me when I got
together with some friends. They quickly disappeared (the cupcakes not the
friends).
Who would have thought that 6 years
ago I would have been hitching rides on the back of camels out in to the
deserts of Jordan to have cardamom scented coffee with Bedouins and today I
would bring cardamom scented boozy cupcakes to an officer spouse's club social.
Some days I wonder which world is the one that is in fact not my own.
Limoncello Cupcakes. Baking Chez Moi page 194