Lemon Pound Cake For Any Occasion
The pound cake is one of the most basic cakes to bake in a home kitchen.
Traditional recipes simply call for a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a pound of eggs — all combined and baked into a huge loaf that can feed quite a lot of people.
The more modern recipes would have these four ingredients in equal amounts to add up to one pound, which would yield a good size of cake for a small family.
It’s an easy recipe to commit to memory, but I notice that many current recipes do not follow the strict rule of equal amounts of each ingredient but tweak the measurements to achieve the best result in texture and flavour.
Having been liberated from the confines of this rule, my mother-in-law and I tested the recipe by reducing the sugar and found that the taste and texture were phenomenal, and we did not miss the surplus sugar.
Moreover, the whole house was perfumed with the aroma of butter baked with lemon zest as it wafted through the kitchen.
The recipe that we used says to drizzle the juice over the cake, but we found that it caused uneven distribution of the juice with pockets of extreme sourness in some places.
Our solution is to “paint” the juice over the cake with a pastry brush, allowing it to penetrate through the numerous holes we made in the cake.
The result: a truly appetising cake with bursts of lemony freshness, a delightful buttery flavour, a velvety crumb and a crunchy crust.
You may serve it with sweetened whipped cream, but that is optional because it is so good on its own.
Lemon pound cake
- 2 lemons
- 225g unsalted butter, plus 25g more for the pan
- 200g castor sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 210g all-purpose flour
- 1½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 100ml whole milk
Optional
- 1 cup whipping cream
- 2 tbsp powdered sugar
Method
1. Coat the inside of a loaf pan with a generous amount of butter. Line the pan with baking parchment and coat the paper with butter.
2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside.
3. Grate the zest of both lemons into a mixing bowl.
4. Add butter and sugar into the mixing bowl and cream together until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time until combined.
5. Fold in sifted flour in batches, alternating with some milk each time, until combined.
6. Pour into the loaf pan, spread out evenly and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 50 to 60 minutes until the cake is deemed done using the skewer test.
7. Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes. In the meantime, squeeze the juice of half a lemon.
8. While the cake is still hot, poke 20 to 30 holes evenly throughout the cake with a skewer.
9. Brush lemon juice all over the top and sides of the cake, allowing the juice to seep into the holes in the cake.
10. Then cool completely before serving with a good dollop of sweetened whipped cream.
