Tuesday, April 17, 2012

TWD/BWJ: Lemon Loaf Cake



A comedy of errors right from the start.  First, I accidentally made this 2 weeks ago before I realized that Pizza Rustica was the "Easter" recipe.  Surely you can understand my confusion.  Anyway, it was a good thing I made it then.  I needed a non-messy dessert to go with dinner for a sick friend's family.

[PLUG HERE:  if you haven't discovered Meal Train, it's absolutely wonderful!]  

The first cake was really quite dry so the second one (which I sent with the dinner) got a good dose of lemon glaze. Which brings us to attempt #3, finally at the right time on the Tuesdays With Dorie schedule.  The recipe can be found here or here, and links to the other bakers are here.  Let's get started.

I've had a Swan's Down cake pan in my kitchen for at least 20 years. Couldn't resist letting it sit in on the proceedings since I was actually using Swan's Down Cake Flour. 


Notice those organic labels on the lemons?  Thought it was well worth the extra 20 cents apiece to not worry about pesticides.  Especially since we're using the skin.









Naked lemons!  I pretty much love any excuse to use the microplane. Oh, I did juice one of those lemons and added it to the batter. Also mixed the juice of another with powdered sugar to make a thin-ish glaze.









WARNING! It's time to avert your eyes if you can't deal with gross things...

The batter was coming along nicely and it was time to add the cream.  Earlier, I left the carton out on the counter (along with the eggs) to come to room temperature while I went to the grocery for lemons.  At some point you'd think I would've noticed the imprinted date...

 
Yuck-o!!!  Solid and Black!
Definitely NOT left-over from the previous two Lemon Loaf Cakes!

Off to the grocery again.  Don't know if it hurts to leave cake batter partially mixed, but I didn't have a choice. Half an hour later, the cake finally made it into the oven and I set the timer for 45 minutes. Much time passed and I finally decided to check on the timer. Uhhhhh. Not timing.  As my daughter would say, "epic fail." I probably set it for 4 minutes, 50 seconds and didn't hear it go off 40 minutes early.  But amazingly enough, the cake was not burnt.  Heck it wasn't even done. So I baked it longer. No idea how much total time, but the toothpick was the decider. When it finally came out clean, I poked lots of holes in the cake with the toothpick and poured on the glaze.  






You can see that some of the glaze pooled up around the bottom of the cake. After a few minutes the extra had soaked in and I popped it out of the pan to finish cooling.






This is the shoe I saw this week.  A loafer would've been nice, LOL!  But instead I got a running shoe.  Well, yesterday WAS the Boston marathon...



10 comments:

  1. You certainly had a lot of work with this recipe! For me it definitely needed a glaze or some lemon juice in the batter. Your third loaf rose beautifully!

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  2. Wow - you definitely gave this one the old college try :-)

    I thought these loaves greatly benefited from a glaze.

    The shoe is funny - my eldest is a runner and I can't tell you how many times she's left a running shoe in the woods (usually sucked off by mud) during a race... Runners don't let anything stop them - not even missing shoes!

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  3. Great baking adventure! But in the end the loaf came out looking great. My baking wasn't quite as eventful, but my loaf came out kind of flat.

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  4. You are such a trooper! Your cake turned out great and it looks like the time that the batter rested and the baking time didn't hurt it at all. Great photo of the shoe. :)

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  5. looks like yours turned out like a treat!

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  6. OMG I love my Microplaner too! I used to use a box grater for everything, but since getting the Microplaner, it is such a pleasure to grate things. One can get carried away...

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  7. I love my Microplane - totally worth adding another gadget to the kitchen. We enjoyed this loaf, too. I like your dedication to the recipe, too.

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  8. I need to get a Microplane...zesting was not fun for me,lol. Looks delicious!

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  9. I always get organic lemons when I am using the zest as well. It might be my imagination, but I also find they taste better.

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  10. I love your vintage cake pan! Or a yellow shoe or school bus!?

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