2 January 2018
Welcome friends. Today I want to share my lemon pound cake recipe. I was working on this cake over the summer, and I've had a few setbacks getting the recipe posted. When I was looking at similar recipes, one of them suggested giving a small loaf as a holiday gift. If you are not a fan of fruitcake (I am not), this would be a welcome alternative. This recipe can be a little temperamental. If the oven temperature is off or the baking soda is old, it changes the final cake.
This cake is somewhere between a pound cake and an angel food cake. I love the crumb structure. It isn't spongey like angel food cake or dense like some pound cake. The main problem that I had with the original recipe is that the cake dried out and got hard very quickly once it was cut. It did not have a very long shelf-life. This annoyed me because a pound cake should get better a few days after it is made. Also, the original recipe was for a bundt cake pan and I wanted to make a smaller cake.
Adding some fat into the recipe in the form of egg yolks helped to give the cake a longer life. I played around with adding a lemon syrup to the cake while it was hot. However, this altered the crumb and I didn't want to do that. I don't add a glaze or frosting to the top. I like to pair it with fresh fruit. I took one of these cakes into the office, and my coworkers were ecstatic.
You may notice that there is a lot of mixing time in this recipe. As I looked at other recipes, I discovered that pound cake is kind of old school and has been around for a long time. All the mixing adds air to the batter and it is the main way of making a lighter cake. Use a stand mixer to make this cake.
While I was working on the recipe, I also tried increasing the heat to reduce the baking time. Changing the heat didn't do anything to shorten the bake time. It just created a cake that was denser and less enjoyable. This cake really does better at a low temperature and a long bake time.
Lemon Pound Cake
45 min. prep time | 1 hr 10 min. bake time
Ingredients
makes 1 loaf or 4 mini loaves
- 2 1/3 cups cake flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup low-fat sour cream (8 oz container)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 4 Tbl butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 egg whites
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
Directions
preheat the oven to 325 °F.
place a large wire-mesh strainer over a large bowl. Add the flour and salt and sift them into the bowl. Set aside.
separate the egg whites from the yolks of two eggs. Set the egg whites aside.
place the sour cream in medium bowl. Stir in the baking soda with a wooden spoon. Set aside and allow the mixture to expand.
place the butter in a microwaveable bowl. Microwave for 10 seconds. Repeat. Place the softened butter in a mixing bowl. Using a paddle attachment, blend for 30 seconds.
add the sugar to the mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed for about 3 minutes. The mixture will start out looking like a powder but will end up clumping together a bit. It will look more like shaved ice.
add the egg whites and beat the mixture at medium speed for about 2 minutes to combine. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat the mixture for about a minute after each addition.
add about 1/3 of the flour and mix at low speed to combine, about 30 seconds. Next, add about 1/2 of the sour cream mixture and mix at low speed to combine. Repeat. Mix in the remaining flour.
add the vanilla and the lemon juice and stir the batter with a wooden spoon to combine. This is a thick batter. Take your time with this addition.
spray the bottom of a 9 by 5 loaf pan (or 4 mini loaf pans) with cooking spray. Pour the batter into the pan and tap the pan on the counter top a few times to reduce the air bubbles in the batter.
bake the cake in the middle of the oven. Bake a large loaf for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Bake mini loaves for about 42 minutes. The cake will be be pale yellow in color with some gold around the edges. A tester inserted in the center will come out clean.
remove the cake from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Remove the cake from the pan after it has cooled for 15 minutes.