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Happy Thanksgiving!  I am no Day 3 of my attempt to make sure that none of this wacky fruit goes to waste.  It is a Buddha's Hand Citron, a citrus fruit with finger-like tentacles, no juice, and lots of rind to zest.  It also smells amazing! My son and I cut it crosswise so that some of the layers would be shaped like flowers and we blanched them to take out some of the bitterness.  We tried to candy layers but that didn't work as well as we wanted it to because we couldn't seem to get the layers dry enough.  I would try using a food dehydrator next time. So I've been attempting to come up with creative ways to fully use this rare fruit. Yesterday, I hit upon dicing the fruit and adding it to cupcakes.  We frosted and decorated them and they looked and tasted gorgeous. It was then that I started to realize that they would also taste amazing as a morning breakfast muffin with a lemon glaze and a slide of Buddha's Hand on the top.  See the recipe below!

This cupcake is hiding a hidden flavor! Last Monday, my son and I ventured to the grocery store in search of fruit that was new to us.  This is something that his teacher suggested as a part of Thanksgiving.  Five bucks later, we came away with one that I even I hadn't seen before. The Buddha's Hand Citron.  A yellow citrus fruit that doesn't grow as a sphere but as a bunch of finger-like tentacles.  These fruits can either have their fingers closed as if they are praying or splayed open.   We had to figure out what to do with it once we got it home and soon discovered that it has uses as a flavoring in salads and desserts.  When we cut into it, we also learned that it had the most amazing lemony fragrance.    I have been challenging myself to find uses for it, because a fruit this beautiful (and pricey!) should not go to waste.  Today's challenge was to see how they worked in a cupcake recipe.   RECIPE: Buddha's Hand Citron Cupcakes

My son's fourth grade teacher sent him on a mission... to the local produce section.  She had explained to the class that grocery stores will often stock up on different and interesting fruit during the days before Thanksgiving and that the best day to shop would definitely be Monday.   So, in spite of the fact that I really don't have much of a voice, we just had to get going!  This is what we took home with us.  Yellow tentacles reaching in all different directions, small and bumpy.  But with a really pleasing lemony smell.  It looked innocent enough. This was my introduction to the Buddha's Hand, a special kind of citrus fruit that is valued not only for its appearance but also for its sweet and flavorful rind.   Of course we didn't bother to Google what we could do with it until we actually had it home and were busy observing it on the counter.   We learned that our Buddha's Hand version was considered to be the open type, with fingers splayed in