Lemon Cake

[Dailey]

i was thinking about adding lemons to my favorite white cake recipe but am not sure if it will need adjusting. so, i was wondering if any of you have a very lemony, moist cake recipe that you would like to share. thanks!

[Patrick S]

I highly recommend the lemon glow chiffon cake from The Cake Bible. I always double the amount of zest and juice, and serve it with lemon cream. I've tried a lot of lemon cake recipes, and this is probably my favorite. The Cooks Illustrated lemon pound cake, doused with lemon syrup, is also very good and very quick.

[Patrick S]

Here's a thread devoted to lemon chiffon:

Lemon Chiffon Cake, seeking great recipe for it.

[Patrick S]

It took me a few minutes to find, but here's another thread with lemon cake ideas:

When life hands you lemons. . .

[Wendy DeBord]

Welcome to the eGullet Society For Arts & Letters Dailey!

I do add lemon zest, lemon oil or lemon emulsion to taste (and or any combination of), to any cake recipe I want to turn into a lemon flavored cake. I might do that to any type of cake, examples: a pound cake, angel food cake, white cake, sponge cake.

I really like lemon oil because it packs alot of punch with only a small amount added. With lemon emulsion you do need to be careful you don't upset the ratios in your recipe. With lemon zest, I like to put it in my cusinart with my sugar to chop it very finely.......making a lemon sugar. That really releases all the natural oil from the peel into your sugar. You can do similar with orange peel and both can be used in almost any recipe thru the flavored sugar with-out upsetting a recipe.

[Ling]

This is the lemon cake recipe I use. The only change I make is adding maybe an extra tablespoon or two of lemon juice to the glaze, but keeping the amount of sugar the same.

http://www.saveur.com/article.jsp?ID=4294&typeID=120

[Dailey]

thanks patrick for the links, can't wait to go through them!

wendy, thanks for the warm welcome, glad to be here! great tip about blending the zest with sugar.

ling, sounds good, i can't wait to give it a try!

[PassionateChefsDie]

i was thinking about adding lemons to my favorite white cake recipe but am not sure if it will need adjusting.  so, i was wondering if any of you have a very lemony, moist cake recipe that you would like to share.  thanks!

←

The best one i had was a Italian Lemon polenta cake but my freind the pastry chef's got the recipe if you cant find a source then follow up this post and I'll track the recipe down

Hope this helps

Perfection cant be reached, but it can be strived for :hu:

[Dailey]

thanks! i'll do a search

[racheld]

This is the crackly, yellowed little recipe from some long-forgotten newspaper or women's magazine, which my Mammaw used for all of my life for ladies' gatherings or other special occasions. Had they been bricks, the number of loaves consumed over 50 years' time by the Baptist WMU alone would have added a new wing to the church and a small extension to the parsonage. I cannot give credit, nor do I think printing it verbatim will cause a food-writer from the 20's to rise up in pursuit of legal recourse.

I send it, as it appears, though I DO have a tweak-habit, and so have added the 2 tablespoons of lemon zest. I whirl it with the sugar, then proceed with the recipe as written:

3 cups flour

1 1/2 t. salt

1 1/2 t. baking powder

2 1/4 cups sugar

(2 T. lemon zest---my addition)

3 eggs

1 1/8 cups oil

1 1/2 cups milk

2 T. poppyseed (opt.)

1 1/2 t. each: vanilla extract, lemon extract, butter flavoring

Mix dry. Mix wet. Beat all together 400 strokes. (2 to 3 minutes in KitchenAid).

Bake in loaf pans, 350 for one hour.

We made these by the hundreds for Military teas here on Post, as well as for gifts, to-the-sick visits and funeral luncheons. And they are my granddaughter's most requested addition to Fairy Tea. She's been climbing that kitchen stool and measuring out those wets and drys since she was two.

[Dailey]

racheld,

thanks so much for the recipe! do you weight the sugar/flour or just used a measuring cup? thanks!

[racheld]

Cup---a battered set of copper ones retrieved when my Dad discontinued housekeeping and sold our family home. I have them stuck down into the big apothecary jars of flour, sugar, coffee, etc., on my kitchen counters. I like looking at the shine when I cook.

And the recipe was from my MISSISSIPPI Mammaw, who never heard of grams, and grabbed whichever cup came handiest out of the kitchen cabinet...her theory was that measuring ANY amounts in any size cup evened out if ALL the ingredients for that one particular dish were measured with that cup...don't know how the oil, eggs, etc., were figured into that equation, but somehow it worked.