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Lemon cake, unglazed
The cake that I made for my friend spudtruckowner’s Mom’s 83rd birthday comes from a recipe that was given me by a friend who caters parties with her cakes, cbl. It has had a lot of success with her clients, and it was a big hit with the family here.
The recipe is written out to be emailed here, so it’s not in the usual recipe format.
1 box duncan hines lemon supreme, 1 cup flour, 4 egg whites, 1 1/3 cup water, 2 tbls oil, 1 box instant lemon pudding, pinch o salt, 1 cup sugar, 1 tbs each vanilla and lemon extracts, 1 cup sour cream
mix wet ingredients on low, adding the egg whites one at a time
add in dry ingredients
325 degrees for approx an hour – every oven is different, so take a peek around the 45 minute mark to see how squishy the middle is :D
if she’s really gaga for lemon, you can poke holes with a chopstick or skewer when it comes out of the oven and pour 1/2 can of lemonade concentrate over the cake
Here, we made the holes in the cake and flled it with lemon glaze made with fresh lemon. Then a slightly thicker glaze went over the top of the cake, with lemon zest added to it. The recipe for the glaze;
Makes About 1/2 Cup Lemon Icing
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Total Time: 5 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 2 tsp grated lemon zest
- 1 tbsp milk
- 1 small drop food coloring, optional
Preparation:
Combine ingredients in a small bowl and stir until smooth.
We made the glaze by feel/sight, as it needed to be of two different consistencies, one to be runny and the other to cover.
This is very luscious, and for lemon lovers, quite a treat. It perked up some winter days here, and we did embelish it with ice cream too.
50 Comments
Saying good morning Ruth,
The cake sounds delightful and I’m sure it was. The part of your title, impressing people, is what interests me as I have an unopened bag of sugar in my baking cupboard that has been there nearly ten years. So sugary baked anything is foreign territory. (Is aged sugar a possible new gourmet trend?) *g*
I have found that baking things that I enjoy usually positively impresses people. I seldom pressure myself to produce another’s favorite. Just me, though.
I am of the if you don’t like my baking (cooking) and you complain, you do the fixings for the next meal, school of thought. (Double *g*)
After ten years I doubt the sugar can be used except by melting. Look for caramelized recipes!
The bit about impressing folks is to promote our friend cbl, who’s the cake maker. Maybe I should see if she minds my putting in her contact info?
I’m impressed. Lemony goodness. Thanks Ruth.
Mmmmm….lemon cake…!
I’m trying to find the degrees of separation between lemon cake and kittens. I’ll have to keep thinking on it. :)
Recommend, try it indeed.
Ate up but not forgotten.
My sister and I share a birthday. She was born on my 4th and we usually celebrate together at mom’s, combining the b-days and Easter celebrations. This might be the perfect cake for that.
I’m going to order one of those wonderful soy candles I shared yesterday for her too.
It got raves from everyone who tried it, and of course, cbl told us up front it was a favorite when she shared the recipe to begin with.
I know cakes with pudding ingredient are always crowd pleasers. I am a scratch baker for the most part, and I think people think it takes more time, but I’m not sure. I have a lemon cake recipe 72nd Street Y lemon cake that I love to make. I think lemon cake is really a winner no matter what recipe.
Usually am scratch inclined too, but always open to suggestion. And goo is a deepseated inclination. Has to do with coming from a dry climate, I secretly suspect.
Yum Yum eat em up.
I may have told the story before of my SIL hearing from my mother that the meringue cookies she made had come from some 30 year-old egg whites that LM found in the freezer. I think my SIL threw up in her mouth a little, but we had quite a laugh about LM’s frugality. She was not a waster of food, that is for freaking sure.
I’d be game for trying to use that sugar, not sure why it would not be still good as long as no critters got into it during the 10 years.
Storage is okay for long periods, put up or frozen, but the nutritional value will be zero after a year. This is the big problem with survival food products, the sellers don’t tell you that you can’t live on it.
Sugar will not spoil but it will consolidate into a piece of hard candy.
And to Ruth @14,
No critters in it, but, I have a brick and a half of sugar, afraid I might pollute the ground water or something if i just toss it out in the field and let it dissolve. Wild deer or squirrels or my neighborhood crows coming down with liver or pancreas trouble. Won’t chance it.
Being a little silly, but I will use honey or maybe a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar in a pancake or muffin recipe. Dates, raisins, apples, bananas, dried apricots, to sweeten the mix.
Inspired by ET’s very nice post and reminder last week, my new sour dough starter was 48 hours old at 6:00 AM and I mixed up a two loaf size batch sour dough sponge for Monday baking. Distinctively sour already, should be good to go.
Oscar Peterson and Itzhak Perlman: Side by Side, melds the ingredients nicely, I believe.
Happy birthday to your mom, belated!
Is there any reason that a bundt pan could not bee used? The cake sounds delicious.
There’s probably a perfectly good way to break up a brick of sugar, maybe put it in burlap and pound it with a hammer, but making it into caramel was my first thought, simple syrup would be a bartender’s p.o.v.
Sounds like good bread, would love to have some. I haven’t made yeast bread in some time.
We passed it on, she was hoping you’d send presents too! (can’t resist the bad jokes.)
As long as you test it with a toothpick before you take it out, I can’t imagine why not. I’ve also heard of baking bundt cake in a pan of water to keep it even temperature, too.
I love her spirit, LOL!
Hi pupses, and thanks for the post and recipe, Ruth. Thanks for posting this, I had seen the discussion of the cbl’s recipe conversion at OE, but carelessly didn’t bookmark it.
Do you have a recommendation about the best pan size to use? Do you think it can be done in 2 standard round cake pans, or is better as a sheet cake? If cbl is around maybe she could share her experiences with that?
I’d love to make the lemon version for an upcoming birthday. The glazes sound like a luscious addition, Ruth.
Loved the sourdough vid and music, nonqui. I still haven’t sent off for that free starter, but I just received my copy of the Tassajara Bread Book, so I might use their recipe and make my own. Might make their bran muffins this week, too.
Have a beef roast in the crockpot, and a batch of coleslaw in the fridge, the house smells great and I am counting the minutes until dinner.
So glad you are going to use it, this is really good. I did the sheet cake, but can;t imagine the round pans would be any less good. The glaze is my idea of right, but then I’m not some one who much craves sweets – and icing would be too much for me.
Sugarbrick, did not think of that. Does it help to put it in a bag w/a couple of slices of bread? I have resurrected brown sugar in the microwave on occasion. Though I am not sure it is worth the time and effort of messing around with it. I wonder if my worms would like a sugar brick?
Lol, worms have better sense than people, probably, and wouldn’t touch a sugar brick with a ten foot … something.
OmAli,
That is the one I used for this batch along with a Tablespoon of powdered milk. As I keep my thermostat lower than some people do, the top of my refrigerator thermometer reads 72 degrees and the at is where I set the crock and stirred it several times over two days. One packet of yeast, flour and water. Take a good sniff of the contents two days later and the yeasty smell has changed. There are some good CD’s in the $.25 bin at the second hand, often.
Good info, thanks.
I’m wondering if the care and feeding of the starter may eat me out of house and home, though, because we are both watching our weight and aren’t eating as much bread as we would like to be eating :)
I’m thinking there will be a new band soon appearing as SugarBrick™ shortly.
I had sworn off crystal white sugar 25 years ago, soft drinks 12 or more, got picky about corn syrup in any other store foods about 10 years ago. My ex made very fancy sweets and desserts professionally, and when the refined sugar was around I had trouble restraining myself. My addictive behavior problem for sure.
These were kind of like a monument/reminder to past eating habits and now changed behavior/tastes and have been removed from the cupboard and deposited safely near the stone fence on the far edge of the field. ;^)
I just get rid of it by using it all up in one batch of bread if baking looks to be an infrequent activity and start all over, later. Piano teacher, politco friends, co-workers/sub-contractors at coffee break, or relatives are supplied when I get a particularly good batch. The guy who sells the starter, in last week’s link, explained how he dried the starter, pouring it out into a big flat pan, I think for shipping it to others. Dried and frozen it can likely be re-activated at some point.
Ganglia? Okay, not appropriate gland but I love the word.
I do, too, but that is downright scary, lol!
That’s probably what I will do, bake up one big batch, give most away and keep enough to enjoy without too much guilt. It probably freezes pretty well, I imagine, so I could keep some that way for another splurge.
Of course, exercise would take care of the problem, but I’m not doing enough of that.
We have a chest freezer in the cellar here, so enough to store batches in. Nice for buying at good prices, too.
I envy you the space for a separate freezer. We have so much in our garage (and no basement) that there truly isn’t enough space. Abu has it organized to the nth degree: attic above; ceiling suspended canoe, kayak and bike; wall mounted kayaks; shelving pretty much floor to ceiling; both cars -I’m surprised the place hasn’t imploded.
Maybe a standup in a closet! This is the first time I’ve had enough room for a chest freezer, it’s very nice, though we have years of accumulated zucchini to clean out.
Zucchini and Kudzu must be first cousins!
I would seriously consider the closet idea, no lie, but that is another area we have needed to super organize. We added another shelf above the all the existing closet shelves, plus put shelving at both ends of every closet :). I think we are defying some law of physics here!
Sounds like you need accordion attachments to the ends of rooms, like those RV’s that you can crank out to be more space.
Zucchini makes you happy to have it before it makes you sorry. Some beautiful huge zucchini always go begging, not enough neighbors.
I’d encourage at least a short experiment with extending the starter. Keep it in the fridge, feed it with a tablespoon of flour once a week and give it a stir. The flavor does develop.
I just noted what is left in my freezer. Seven cubic ft is ours. Mostly berries, local cherries, garlic scapes, roasted tomato/garlic/basil/onion mixes, local whitefish. Bean coffee when it goes on sale, I buy an extra. Refining my plan on using things, to the time remaining until next season’s fresh, to get to an empty freezer to defrost, clean and begin again. Toward the end I remove everything to the freezer portion of the refrigerator and shut the second unit down for almost two months.
You sound very well planned out. This freezer has not been kept up in several years, and is due for a total turnover. I’m trying not to be pushy.
You are missing an important calling, Ruth. You are a writer, those were beautiful lines. I *bow* to you .
Thanks. I enjoy using words, it’s true. Not missing my calling, using it here (and have done other writing for fun.)
A tablespoon?? I thought we were talking about having to remove cups-full and replace cups-full. I need to re-evaluate!
Gotta go for now, or I’m goning to start gnawing on the table leg.
Ruth, thanks so much for the post and cake info and fun.
Ohmmmm
And we are the richer for it.
*poof*
Gotta get off myself, now.
Scene out the back today;
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oqgM2eOikdMamji8VFkx-Q8szHUx-OY9EC-wKjAl8ho?feat=directlink
thanks for good company
It is a small freezer. The square, 13″ x 13″ x 13″ molded plastic milk, “crates,” stack nicely. One is meats/fish, two fruits/veggies, kind of arrangement. No individual packets of things to get lost on the bottom and everything can be lifted out easily and replaced quickly. I mostly freeze things that cost a lot in the off season and are imported at six times the seasonal price. There are only two of us here.
Thanks to you also, Ruth.
Thanks so much for the mention Ruth – so very happy for you and yours the cake was such a success
fyi to readers: this recipe is adaptable to almost any flavor – it’s the pudding, egg whites, and sour cream that make it so moist and yummy. and it doesn’t matter if the box already has “pudding in the mix” either
there are a zillion ‘how-do-I-make-a-box-of-cake-mix-better-?’ recipes out there – google is your friend.
scratch bakers – google WASC (white almond sour cream cake) it’s the mother recipe – you can go from there – Cake Central is a great resource
yes – a smaller pan of water on the lower shelf while baking helps with more even, less dome cakes
thanks again Ruth ! happy baking everyone !
So glad you got a charge out of my using your cake for everyone’s entertainment. It was a perfect birthday cake. Thanks.