Lemon Pull Apart Bread

As of Sunday night, we were officially wiped out. We're back in full project mode, working on the house, the blog and life in general. For starters, all of our tabs can take comments too! We've also launched our "Home and Garden" tab, where we'll keep you updated on our projects around the house and how our garden is doing. We're also getting ready to launch our new photo platform on Smugmug.com. Right now we are hosting all our images on our Flickr account, which was great when we were new and scrambling to get viewers but we've outgrown what Flickr has to offer, so now we're switching platforms. We plan on rolling out our first Smugmug hosted post later this week, so keep your eyes peeled! Hmm... what else have we been up to, oh yeah! The Backyard! That one teensey little task thats taken us 2 years to get around to even thinking about starting! So for everyone who missed it, heres the low down on our house: Charisse's grandfather, Irv owned the house for the last 60 years before us but one of the conditions was we move in with the house "as is". So we've bit by bit been remodeling and bringing the house up to speed. The last of the great projects is the backyard, which we've been fighting a loosing battle to keep it from going back to nature (not that Koda would mind, she loves to romp through the weeds!). Well this past weekend we mustered up the strength and energy and decided to dive in and get it finished! 2 years ago Eric built some planter boxes for the garden and almost finished them (hammer met thumb, work stopped and never quite got started again). The boxes got finished, filled with dirt and Charisse bought some plants and seeds. We prepped for grass and Eric and our friend Dan demolished some brick to make way for a brand new BBQ. We're now officially excited to have our backyard coming together. So excited, we almost forgot to cook something! Well, we didn't forget, but we were super busy, so we kinda cheated a little bit, and used a refrigerated dough for this bread. Don't worry, it's still pretty amazing, its like a cinnamon roll, but with lemon. Charisse's grandmother came by and ended up eating two big slices, both of which she prefaced with "Oh I couldn't, I'm not hungry". Just goes to show, nobody can resist the lemon bread! 

Lemon Pull Apart Bread
What You Will Need

1 can of refrigerated biscuit dough
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbs butter
the zest of 4 lemons

Icing

3 ounces cream cheese
1/3 cup powered sugar
1 Tbs milk
2 Tbs lemon juice 

In a bowl, mix the sugar, butter and lemon zest and set aside. This will be sprinkled between the layers of bread. 

On a lightly floured surface, Roll out the biscuit dough to a rectangle about 20x12 ish size. Cut the dough crosswise into 5 equal strips. Layer one strip and generously top with sugar, zest filling. Top with another strip and continue staking so that in between each strip of dough is the zest filling. Using a sharp knife, cut the stack crosswise again into 6 equal parts. So you will have 6 stacks of dough that are 5 layers high. In a lightly buttered loaf pan, place the stacks, cut side up, side by side. Cover and let rise until doubled. 

Preheat oven to 350* 

Once bread has risen, bake for about 30-35 minutes until the top is golden brown. Don't worry if the strips pop out of the pan a bit or look uneven. It adds to the effect! 

To make the icing, whip the cream cheese until smooth. Mix in the powered sugar, milk and lemon juice and set aside. 

Let the bread cool for 10 minutes and invert onto cooling rack. Drizzle icing over loaf and serve warm. 

adapted from Flo Braker, Baking For All Occasions