Spring Lemon Cake

Last week Monday night I was really feeling spring. It had been in the mid 40s and sunny, and most of the snow had melted away. I was willing to overlook the black muck that was everywhere as a result of this and think flowers, pastel colors, light and lightly sweet spring time recipes...

So, even though my friend Claire was coming over and I had a dinner of ravioli and asparagus rolled in pancetta and cheese to cook for us, I decided I was going to bake us a cake as well. I found a Paula Deen recipe for Lemon Cake that sounded good, but the Joy of Baking's Lemon Cake recipe I found sounded a bit easier and just as good. Plus, I felt I somehow owed it to the Joy of Baking to finally make one of its recipes.

The recipe went much as expected: cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then the vanilla and lemon zest, sift the other dry ingredients and add them, along with the lemon juice, to the mixture, pour into pan and bake. There were, however, two things about this recipe I had never done before: line the bottom of the pan with parchment, and use a spring form pan.

I compared the frosting from each recipe and found that The Joy of Baking's frosting recipe sounded a bit boring and not quite like what I wanted. This is where I got a bit adventurous (not adventurous as in making my own recipe, but adventurous by using two recipes to come up with one cake). I decided to use the frosting from Paula Deen's recipe, which contained sugar, egg whites, water, vanilla, and cream of tartar rather than The Joy of Baking's confectioner's sugar and lemon juice.

The frosting was bit more work that I normally put into such a thing, taking 8 full minutes of beating, in a make shift double boiler no less! It was 1 minute of mixing in the bowl on the counter and then 7 minutes of mixing over the double boiler. When I told people about this frosting recipe, everyone came back at me with "that's the 7 minute frosting my mom (or grandmother) used to make!" I guess it's pretty popular. It did turn out very yummy, very light and fluffy - like "marshmallow creme" to quote Claire. I made one more addition to the cake though, on top of the frosting (and this was my own idea): coconut flakes.

After a few hours in the kitchen, we finally got to sit down and enjoy a piece of the cake, which I thought turned out very well, and was just the right spring-time kind of dessert I was looking for. Claire agreed, but stated that she thought we should have put more frosting on it. My husband later reported that though the cake was very good, he thought it needed a bit more lemon flavor. I thought the spring form pan and the parchment paper worked great, making a beautifully shaped cake. The last time I tried to bake a cake in a round pan, most of it stuck and I had a very lopsided and falling apart cake. When I told my step-mom about this she said it was more the parchment than the spring form that made the cake come out nicely. I plan on testing this theory on future cakes, and am not so afraid to attempt another layer cake now.

The next day, when going for leftovers, I noticed the frosting had acquired a slight crust to it. By day 3, it was so dried up that it was almost nonexistent. This seemed weird to me. Should I have refrigerated the cake, or would that have made it even worse? I can only guess it has something to do with the whipped egg whites and some reaction they have after sitting for a while. I know I will go back to the cake recipe, but am not sure I would use this frosting again, at least not until I talk to someone who has had more experience with it.

While baking that night, Claire asked me, "So, what happens to all of the things you bake; do you take them to work and share them with others, or do you and Nick (my husband) eat them all?" Though I shared cake with Claire that night, and sent her home with a couple pieces, I guiltily admit that we normally eat them all. I enjoy the act of baking, the joy of seeing something I put effort into turn into something so delicious, and of course, the savoring of each and every piece of that baked good, that I just don't mind eating it all by ourselves. I guess that is being selfish, and maybe that is why I am not benefiting from the gym as much as I could be, but we sure are enjoying it...