Lemon-y Lemon Lemon Cake

So, I don't know if I told you guys this, but I recently got promoted- yay! I'm going to be a real classroom teacher now. The current teacher is pregnant, and won't be returning after having the baby, so this is it! It's the real thing! I'll be half in charge of a classroom full of 12-month olds to 18-month olds!

So the thing is, this girl has been really great during the transition, and even gifted me her lesson-planning binder, which is a bigger deal then it sounds like.

Being crafty, I asked her what her favorite desert was and got the answer lemon cake- she dosen't like chocolate and peanut butter together, is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard?

So I decided to make her this beauty, which is a Joy the Baker specialty. And let me tell you, it is delicious. (I only know because the recipe makes 2 loaves, I didn't eat off of hers)

Your ingredients: cake flour, vanilla, lemons, eggs, baking powder, cream, sugar, butter (you're going to melt your butter and then let it cool while you're doing the other steps)

First, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside

Then, in a seperate bowl, zest the lemons into your sugar and then work the zest into the sugar with your fingers or a spoon so that you have lemon-drenched sugar. (I got to use my new Microplane, as you can see, and it is AWESOME, it makes me want to zest everything.)

Whisk in your eggs, vanilla, and then cream until you have a deliciously lemony gloop that looks like this.

Then switch to a rubber spatula and add in the flour mixture in 2 or 3 steps. The flour and the lemon-eggs are not going to want to blend, but you just gotta get in there with your spatula and say "YOU WILL PLAY NICE." Eventually they'll combine. Then just fold in your melted butter. Then pour into loaf pans and bake!

Comes out looking like this- delicious. There is a syrup that I skipped this time but if I made this recipe again I think I would do it. So I will include it for you.

Lemon-y Lemon Lemon Cake
Adapted from Joy the Baker
2 2/3 cup cake flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract (or 1/2 a vanilla bean, scraped out into the lemon sugar and incorporated)
6 eggs, room temperature
17 tbsp. butter, melted and cooled
2/3 cup heavy cream
zest of 2 lemons
2 1/3 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease 2 loaf pans and put a piece of parchment paper in the bottom of each pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Put the sugar into a large mixing bowl. Zest the lemons into the sugar, then work in the zest with your fingers or a spoon until you have lemon-drenched sugar. Whisk in the eggs until incorporated, then whisk in the vanilla, then the heavy cream.

Add in the flour mixture in 2 or 3 additions, combining well with a rubber spatula.

Fold in the melted butter in 2 or 3 additions.

Pour into the loaf pans and bake for 55-60 minutes, testing until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool on wire racks for 5 minutes, then turn out of the pans onto the racks to cool completely.

Syrup:
Joy the Baker
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
juice of 2 lemons

Stir the water and sugar together in a medium saucepan over medium heat until the sugar melts, then bring to a boil Remove the pan from heat and stir in the lemon juice. Pour the syrup into a heatproof bowl and let cool.

When the cakes test done, transfer them to a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes before unmolding them and turning them right side up on the rack. Place the rack over a baking sheet lined with wax paper and, using a thin skewer, cake tester or thin-bladed sharp knife, poke holes all over the cakes. Brush the cakes all over with the syrup, working slowly so that the cakes sop it up. Leave the cakes on the rack to cool to room temperature.




 

Sunshine Pound Cake

It's been awhile! Did you miss me? I'm back with a bang. A lemony, citrusy bang.

So, the blog that this cake came from is one of my favorite new discoveries- it's been around for a while, but somehow I never came across it. This cake takes a little while to make, but it's not hard, and it's delicious.

Plus it has sunshine in the title, amirite?

Here are your ingredients: butter (except that's way too much), eggs, lemons, limes, an orange, baking soda, cake flour (info below), vanilla, sugar, and sour cream.

First, cream together your butter and sugar for about 3 minutes.

In a seperate bowl, sift together your flour and baking soda. A word on cake flour- if you don't want to buy any, it's very easy to substitute AP flour, which is what I did. You just need some cornstarch. Check out this link for instructions. Add in all your zests and whisk together.

In another bowl, mix together the sour cream, lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, and vanilla.

Add the eggs to the butter-sugar one at a time, mixing well between each one. See? It's looking sunshin-y already.

Alternate adding the flour mixture and sour cream mixture, starting with and ending with the flour mixture. Pour the batter into a thoroughly greased bundt pan and level it off, shaking the pan around until it's even.

Bake it for 65-70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes on a wire rack before you turn it over and pray that it comes out of the pan. If it doesn't, don't panic, just knife around the edges until it wants to slide out.

Hopefully you have someone like The Husband who spends 5 minutes telling you that it's okay that it didn't come out perfectly.

While the cake is cooling down to room temperature, make your glaze. Whisk together the ingredients, then, once your cake is cooled, pour it on top! It's okay if it runs off a little. It looks pretty that way. Don't skimp on the glaze, either. It's delicious.

Seriously, look at it! It's beautiful! You can't even tell that it didn't come out of the pan perfectly.

Sunshine Pound Cake
From Ezra Pound Cake
For the cake:
1 cup butter, room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 cups cake flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup sour cream
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 2 limes
zest of 1 orange (save one tsp. of the zest for the glaze)
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp. fresh lime juice
2 tbsp. fresh orange juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
For the glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 tsp. lime zest
1 tsp. orange zest
1/4 cup fresh orange juice

Preheat your oven to 325°. Thoroughly grease a bundt pan. In a mixer, cream your butter and sugar for 3 minutes on low speed. Meanwhile, in a seperate bowl sift together your flour and baking soda. Add your zests, whisk it together and set aside.

In another bowl, combine the sour cream, lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, and vanilla. Stir together and set aside.

Add the eggs into the butter and sugar one at a time, mixing well between each one. Alternately add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture starting and ending with the flour mixture. Make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to get any stray ingredients. Put the mixer on medium speed for about 20 seconds.

Pour the mixture into your bundt pan, making sure the top is even. Bake for 65-70 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning the pan over and letting the cake cool on the rack. While the cake cools, make the glaze.

In a bowl, whisk together the glaze ingredients. When the cake has reached room temperature, pour the glaze on top.

Raspberry Lemonade Bars

Dude it is hot here, like hot. HOT. Not to mention the cicadas are about to eat my sanity whole. So I thought that a light, fruity desert might be nice, plus I was starting to get stuck in a rich, chocolatey, mostly peanut-buttery desert rut.

I love lemon squares- they're one of my all-time favorite deserts, I actually used to get teased about it in college. But come on, lemon squares (good ones) are possibly one of the lightest, tangiest most wonderful deserts on earth. Am I right? Am I right? So I had to grab this recipe.

And I'm glad I did.

Because they are delicious.

 Your ingredients. I know! That's it! Also, I'd like to say how much I love King Arthur Flour. And apparently I love Domino as well. Look at me, I should get paid for this kind of advertising.

 So, your crust. Cream together your butter and sugar, then add in the flour until it's mixed.

Press it into the bottom of an 8x8. You can see I decided to give parchment paper another chance. And I can begrudgingly say that in this recipe, it works great. Bake the crust for 20-25 minutes until it looks like this...

 Yum. Just ignore the drop of raspberry on there- or pretend I did it on purpose for dramatic effect.

 While the crust is cooling, make your filling. Whisk together your sugar, egg, egg whites, lemon juice, lemon zest, flour and salt and it'll look like this- deliciously lemony.

Here comes the tricky part. You're supposed to press the raspberries through a sieve, meticulously pulling out the seeds so that ONLY THE JUICE gets in the lemon mixture. Well, I decided that was impossible and I didn't care about the seeds. So I shoved them through and just got some raspberry guts, seeds and all. And you know what? Didn't affect the taste. So, if you really don't like eating raspberry seeds then you can do it like you're supposed to. Frankly, I think it tastes just as delicious the way I did it. But cooking is all about preference. Anyway.

Then just mix it all together, pour onto the crust and bake for another 30 minutes or so! You'll be glad you did.

And apparently I still have a problem with lemon squares, because I took that top picture at 8:03am and consumed the pictured square by 8:11am.

Raspberry Lemonade Bars
Slightly adapted from Handle the Heat
8 tbsp. butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 2/3 cup flour
pinch of salt
3 egg whites
1 whole egg
2/3 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons lemon zest (I zested 2 lemons and it was perfect)
1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries, thawed
powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat your oven to 350°. In an electric mixer, cream together the butter and 1/4 cup of sugar. Add the flour and the salt until mixed. Press the dough into an 8x8 pan that has a sheet of parchment paper in the bottom of it with a little hanging over the sides so that you can lift the bars right out when they're done. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until it is just golden brown.

After the crust comes out of the oven, make your filling. Whisk together the lemon juice, lemon zest, egg, egg whites, 2/3 cup flour, 1 1/2 cups sugar in a large mixing bowl. Push the raspberries through a sieve to get a fair amount of juice and raspberry guts into the mixture (about 2 tablespoons). Mix in and then pour the mixture over the crust.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the filling is completely set, and doesn't jiggle. Let the bars cool completely and then refrigerate. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.