BSIA RECIPES

Lemon pound cake with sour cream

3 cups           flour
½ tsp            baking powder
¼ tsp            baking soda
½ tsp            salt
1 cup             butter, softened/room temperature
3 cups           sugar
6                   large eggs
1 tsp              vanilla extract
2                    lemons
1 cup             sour cream
a few cups   icing sugar

1. Grease with butter a 12-inch Bundt pan*. Dust with flour, shaking the excess flour out of the pan.
2. Zest the two lemons, using a metal zester if available, or a fine grater. Gently scrape off just a thin yellow layer of the lemon peel; avoid getting the bitter white part of the peel. Set the zest aside.
3. Squeeze juice from the lemons and set aside.
4. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl. Using a metal whisk is an easy way to mix these together.
5. Preheat the oven to 325°F
6. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together at medium speed for a few minutes until creamy. Scrape bowl as necessary. A mixer is really handy to have, but you can beat it up with a rubber spatula as well.
7. To the butter-sugar mixture, add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat just enough to blend the eggs well. Scrape bowl as necessary.
8. To the batter, add vanilla extract and lemon zest. Add a couple tablespoons of lemon juice. (Save the rest of the lemon juice for the glaze.) Beat in lemon and vanilla briefly until blended.
9. Now alternatively add the flour mixture and the sour cream to the batter. Use a low speed on the mixer.

         Start by adding 1/3rd of the flour mixture. Beat on low speed, scraping bowl as necessary. Then beat in ½ of the sour cream. Beat in another 1/3rd of the flour mixture, followed by the rest of the sour cream. Finally add in the rest of the flour mixture and beat until blended. The batter should be uniformly blended but don’t overbeat the batter, especially once the flour is in it.

1. Pour batter into the cake pan that has been greased and floured. Spread batter evenly. Place the cake pan into the preheated 325°F oven. Bake for about 75 minutes.

The cake should be light golden brown when done but more importantly should pass the toothpick test. Insert a toothpick into the cake’s center and pull it out. It should come out clean, without any batter.
Also, if you gently press your fingers against the cake’s top surface, the top should spring back instead of leaving a depression. Make the lemon glaze while cake is baking.

1. Once the cake is done, pull it out of the oven and cool it on a wire rack. When cooled, gently loosen the edges with a knife and turn the cake upside down over a plate. It doesn’t have to be completely cool before you do this but it should be cooled enough that you do not need a potholder to handle the cake pan.
2. Glaze with lemon glaze. (Spoon the glaze over the cake, spread it around with a butter knife, etc.)

Lemon Glaze – a quick, imprecise recipe

1. Put a couple tablespoons of the lemon juice in a medium sized bowl.
2. Add about 1-2 cups of icing sugar.
3. Add a few drops of vanilla, if you like. 
4. Whisk together with wire whisk or fork, for about a minute, until well blended.
5. Add more lemon juice or icing sugar to get the right consistency.

The consistency should be something like pancake syrup – something you can pour/drizzle over the cake
If you have to spread it like peanut butter, it is too thick – add more lemon juice.
If the glaze just seems to run right off the cake when you spoon it over the cake, it may be too thin – add more icing sugar to thicken it. Or, if there seems to be a lot of icing sugar lumps floating in liquid, add more icing sugar and whisk it up.
But whether its thick/thin, it will probably still taste good so don’t worry too much about the consistency.
If there are some icing sugar lumps, it’s okay. If you don’t want lumps, sift the icing sugar before adding it.

*Any large cake pan or a few smaller cake pans will do; just don’t fill more than 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the pan.

Submitted by; Mary Bennett