Easy Jello Lemon Loaf (or Muffins)

Remember how I mentioned I had a ton of recipes to post from Easter weekend? This is one of them.

My second cousin Mia made around four batches of this wonderful lemon loaf. She was borrowing a cookbook from her roommate and had all the pages bookmarked for the recipes she wanted to try. Over Easter weekend, there was going to be about 20-30 people at the house, so there needed to be a lot of food to feed them. Enter Mia and her four batches of lemon loaf, which when you multiple by two loaves a batch, was about EIGHT lemon loaves in total. The most insane part? She made them at 2am, when everyone else was asleep.

Here is a picture of one of the dessert platters we made up over the weekend. You can see Mia’s lemon loaf and my Easter cookies.

As a family, we burned through about five of the loaves over that weekend and then the remaining ones were divided up and taken home. I didn’t take home any, but my Mom and I made sure we each got a copy of the recipe before we left.

(Not sure why the above photo isn’t centering in the preview, as it’s centered in my edit box. Sigh. Blogger, I will deal with you later.)

The best part about this recipe is that it uses lemon cake mix and lemon Jello and its super easy/quick to make, which will come in handy if you have unexpected family or guests popping by. As I mentioned earlier, it also makes two loaves, so you can always eat one and freeze one for later.

That is, if you aren’t me. I conveniently forgot that I don’t have two loaf pans, I have only one. When I was picking up the cake mix and Jello at the store, this realization didn’t enter my mind. In fact, by the time I thought about it, my oven was already preheated, my batter was already mixed and I was staring stupidly at my one loaf pan.

I debated making each loaf one at a time, but it was almost midnight (the coolest part of the day) and I didn’t want to roast my apartment longer than I had to or stay up later just for one loaf (I would have been half asleep on the couch, growing to resent that remaining loaf in the oven). Instead, I used my loaf pan and then used the remaining batter to make lemon muffins.

I fully intended to freeze the muffins and eat the lemon loaf throughout the rest of the week, but before the baking night was over, Trevor and I managed to eat about 4 lemon muffins. Since the muffins took less time to cook, it was natural to taste-test them first. 🙂

Here is Mia’s recipe:

The best part about this recipe is, as delicious as it is on it’s own, you can also add poppy seeds or blueberries to change it up a bit. I know next time, I will!

Enjoy!