Lemon Pound Cake
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Hi! Remember me? I’m the one that made baked donuts and posted a bunch of Passover stuff then sort of disappeared (except for on Twitter, you can always find me there!). Things have been kind of crazy over here. My back got really bad again (MRI and nerve test next week, eeks!), then my beloved KitchenAid mixer starting wobbling and almost walked off my counter, and then I got laid off from my job of 3+ years. On the flip side, now that I’m home during the day, I was able to spend three hours on Google finding potential solutions to the wobbly mixer. Fingers crossed that it is finally fixed!
A couple days after I was laid off, I went down to San Diego to celebrate my mom’s birthday with the family. Around that time, my mom apparently asked my dad to pick up lemons while he was at Costco. And pick up lemons, he did. A HUGE bag of lemons, more than my mom would ever use before they would go bad. Fortunately, my sister and I benefited from my dad’s shopping mishap, and I decided a lemon cake was in order.
With my mixer not wobbling off the counter, I got to work zesting, juicing, and mixing, and had high hopes. Sadly, those hopes were squashed. I’m sure this is a perfectly decent lemon cake, even if the texture and taste of the bottom and sides was a little cornbread-ish. But once you have tasted Ina’s Lemon Cake, any other lemon cake is guaranteed to fail in comparison.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have Judge Judy to watch before I head to happy hour at 5:00.
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup shortening, room temperature
5 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
6 Tbsp lemon juice
1 lemon, zested
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350F.
Spray or butter and flour 2 loaf pans or one large bundt pan. (I used a 10-cup bundt pan and had about two extra cups of batter so I made mini bundts.)
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into medium bowl. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, cream together butter, shortening and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well blended after each one.
Add dry ingredients in three additions to butter mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Mix in lemon juice and zest.
Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool cakes in pans for 15 minutes. Turn cakes out onto racks and cool completely.
Recipe from Plain Chicken.
Lemon Bars
Hi, remember me? I used to blog…somewhat regularly…over here, but then, I didn’t. Work has had me traveling. A lot. In the past couple of months I’ve been to Portland, Seattle, Seattle again (at BlogHer Food, were you there?), then Washington DC, Denver, and Phoenix. My weekends have been spent playing catch-up, and baking unfortunately wasn’t on my to-do list.
But then I took few days off this week and went down to San Diego to visit my family and just…relax. I spent much of the time sitting by the pool.
Then saw these lemons sitting on the counter and knew I had to bake lemon…something.
A quick Google search led me to this recipe, and after reading dozens of reviews, I made a few adjustments and the end result is nothing short of delicious. And I don’t even like lemon bars. The crust is thick and buttery and the lemon layer was sweetly tart with a nice texture. I know these will be a summer go-to recipe!
Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 cup + 1 TBS all-purpose flour
2/3 cup lemon juice
zest of one lemon
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a medium bowl, blend together softened butter, 2 cups flour, and 1/2 cup sugar. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9×13 inch pan. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm and golden.
In another bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/4 cup + 1 TBS flour. Whisk in the eggs, lemon juice, and zest. Pour over the baked crust.
Bake for an additional 20 minutes in the preheated oven. The bars will firm up as they cool. (You can put them in the fridge as well.)
Recipe adapted from AllRecipes.com.
Lemon Bars
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I’ve always loved the look of lemon bars, but the taste, eh, not so much. Whenever lemon bars are on a platter I admire their beauty but always pass on them. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even had a bite of a lemon bar since I was a kid. So when I found myself with a few extra lemons after making lemon cakes for my dentist (I know, the irony), I thought I’d give lemon bars another try. I remembered my friend Jami had mentioned her killer lemon bars before so I asked for her recipe.
When I brought these bars into work I put a note on the container that said “Ugly Lemon Bars” because I wasn’t happy with the look of the sliced bars. I was anxious to taste them and cut them before they were completely set, thus ruining the smooth pretty look of the glaze. Yes, these bars are glazed rather than sprinkled with powdered sugar, which is a plus in my book. I hate powdered sugar on things. Not only does it get all over the place, there is no way to neatly bite into anything with a powdered sugar top. Anyway, I put these bars in the kitchen at 8:00 a.m. and they were gone before noon. And all morning long people came up to me and said, “The Ugly Lemon Bars are soooo good!” There were even a couple of people who said they don’t usually like lemon bars, but they really liked these.
For the record, I still don’t like lemon bars. I’m a huge texture person when it comes to food, and the lemon bar filling I just find odd. Some people may say I am odd, but whatever.
Photos of the process.
Crust Ingredients
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
Crust Preparation
Preheat oven to 350F. Mix together the crust ingredients with a pastry blender or fork until crumbly. Press into the bottom of a 9″x13″ pan. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until crust is light golden brown.
While crust is baking, prepare filling.
Filling Ingredients
4 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup lemon juice
Filling Preparation
Mix together eggs, sugar, flour, and baking powder thoroughly. You can just stir it all together with a whisk. Add lemon juice and beat well. Pour over warm crust and return to oven. Bake 20-30 minutes. (Don’t let it get too brown.) Cool completely.
Glaze Ingredients
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
Glaze Preparation
Whisk together powdered sugar and lemon juice to make a relatively thin glaze. Drizzle (or spread) over the bars.
Allow glaze to dry, then cut into small squares.
Yields 40-48 small lemon bars.
Recipe from Night Baking.
