I figured I make too many chocolate treats and desserts. It's a bad way to treat a friend, so I thought I'd switch it up before anyone got bored and started eating their own toes instead. And ended up with a (surprisingly) sweet lemon cake. Now, the original recipe calls it a "sheet cake", which is a bit rude, also a bit redundant methinks. To paraphrase a comedy great, any cake is a sheet cake if you use a sheet.
Not quite. I know. It's why I'm here and Mitch is. Well. Alas. No longer with us.
Anyway. Cake. How about I tell you all I did to get it, so it looks like I didn't just spend the entire weekend lazying about and eating an exorbitant amount of sweet treats?
What You'll Need
Now, bear in mind I made two. One for a regular cake tin of some 23-diameter, and one for a small ceramic dish to offer Lady Beccs as part of a blood sacrifice. But you don't need to know about that. So adjust accordingly, bien sure.
- 260 gr all-purpose flour
- Baking soda and baking powder (half a teaspoon each should do)
- 200 gr buttermilk (now, of course, Romania being a less than fancy country, I made my own using milk and lemon juice. A la guerre, mon ami.)
- 50 ml lemon juice
- Zest of one lemon (could use more, probably, but I'm wary of such things, so)
- Vanilla extract
- 250 gr brown sugar
- 120 gr softened butter
- 3 eggs (you'll only need the yolk of one, so find something to do with some egg whites, or it will sit in your fridge the entire fucking weekend. And still.)
Now, that's it for the cake itself. Will tell you about the glaze in a bit, but first.
What You'll Do
A bunch of things with your hands and knees.
No.
Set the oven to 160C to heat.
Mix the dry ingredients - as in flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt if using any - in a bowl.
Also mix the buttermilk, lemon juice and vanilla in another bowl or measuring cup and put that aside. Don't worry, it'll come back, I promise.
Now, for the fun whirly part. Beat together or paddle together (another fancy notion. Must be for all those people swimming in buttermilk) the sugar and lemon zest on medium-high speed for a few minutes. You'll see the granulated sugar will start to get mashed and mix with the zest leading to much olfactory goodness. Once thoroughly combined, you want to set aside 1/4th of the sugar-zest mixture for topping later.
To the remaining sugar mixture, you'll want to add the softened (read: melted) butter and beat it well, incorporating the eggs and yolk also until it's all one big gloop. Take turns adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture until they're all together. It will look surprisingly doughy and will pretty much fall into your tin without much scooping (ooh. pervy.).
Right-o. Bake for around 25 minutes. You could go longer, you could go less. Depending on consistency of the batter, type of oven etc. Make sure you have a toothpick nearby and check regularly.
Now, for the infamous glaze. That's basically a mixture of powdered sugar (300 gr) and lemon juice (15-20 ml) and buttermilk (another 10 ml or so maybe). You can adjust to your needs. Personally, I wasn't too crazy about it, felt it was needlessly sugary and not all that great. So in my opinion, you could just as well skip.
Me, I respected the original recipe and did the glaze as well.
Once the cake is thoroughly cooked, bring out of the oven and leave to cool, then glaze if using. Remember the sugar-zest we saved? Now's its time to shine. Technically, you're supposed to sprinkle it into the glaze, and it works well. If not using glaze, I'd suggest sprinkling it on the cake as soon as it's out of the oven, so the sugar can melt and stick to the cake.
Et voila. Food. Citrus. Vitamin C. Sun. Excitement. Diabetes. All in under 700 words.
