Glazed Lemon Cake

Glazed Lemon Cake - made February 21, 2010 from The Silver Palate Cookbook


Whenever I have lemons and buttermilk to use up, I always fall back onto a lemon pound cake recipe. They hardly ever go wrong and they're so easy to make. This recipe is no exception. The cake is easy to make and has a nice, typical pound cake texture. I wouldn't say it's the best lemon pound cake I've ever made but it's still pretty decent. I made the lemon glaze to go over it and at first it seemed like a lot of glaze for the one cake. The recipe calls for pouring the glaze over the cake while it's still hot. Obviously when you do that, the glaze will melt right over the cake since the glaze has butter. That's actually the point because it moistens the cake and forms a nice crust. However, I only poured half the glaze over the hot cake, let it melt over it, and when the cake was still lukewarm, I poured the rest of the glaze over it. That way, the whole thing didn't melt in a puddle over the cake. I covered it with enough glaze to form the first coating and when that had hardened a bit, I covered it with the rest of the glaze, most of which didn't melt but hardened to make a thicker glaze once cool. Pretty tasty and lemony too.




½ pound (2 sticks) sweet butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, sifted
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
2 tightly packed tablespoons grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 325˚F. Grease a 10-inch tube pan.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition.
3. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Stir dry ingredients into egg mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Add lemon zest and juice.
4. Pour batter into prepared tube pan. Set on middle rack of the oven and bake for 1 hour and 5 minutes, or until cake pulls away from sides of pan and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
5. Cool cake in the pan, set on a rack, for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan and spread on icing at once, while cake is still hot.

8 to 10 portions

Lemon Icing
1 pound confectioners’ sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) sweet butter, softened
3 tightly packed tablespoons grated lemon zest
½ cup fresh lemon juice

Cream sugar and butter thoroughly. Mix in lemon zest and juice; spread on warm cake.