What to do with leftover citrus — Sammy and Natasha's Adventures

As is typical with me, I bought way too much citrus for my dishes. I needed like 3 lemons and 2 oranges but I bought like 6 of each, lol. I want to say it’s because of how terrible I am at judging how much juice I can get out of the fruit (which is so legit), but I think my love of citrus also contributes to me overbuying. This means that I can make even more delicious citrus meals though. And in this case, I made two delicious desserts.

First with the leftover oranges, I made an orange and cardamom semolina cake. This was inspired by one of my favorite cookies to make lately: orange and cardamom shortbread cookies, and that I've been getting more inspired by Middle Eastern desserts. Semolina flour is common in middle eastern desserts. I made the cake with butter, sugar, semolina flour, AP flour, orange zest, orange juice, cardamom, baking powder, and salt (always add salt to your desserts, trust me). As it was cooking, I made an orange syrup with orange juice and sugar. After the cake was baked, I took it from the oven, immediately poked holes in it and poured the syrup all over it. As it cooled, it sucked up the syrup. It was delicious and not overly sweet! :)

Then with the leftover lemons, I made lemon bars. This is one of my favorite desserts of all time so I was more than happy to make these. I made a shortbread crust that I blind baked while putting together the filling. The filling used eggs, sugar, flour, and all the zest and juice I had left in my lemons. I actually had to add an extra newer lemon to have enough juice. My lemons were meyer lemons though so the lemon bars were a little more tame and sweet than I’d normally make them though. Still delicious!