Super Lemon Bundt Cake

Super Lemon Bundt Cake - made August 1, 2021 from Sprinkle Some Sugar 

You know how a lot of food blogs have picture perfect baked goods that always turn out beautifully? And you sometimes think those bloggers just have the magic touch and everything comes out of their kitchen camera ready? Yeah, this isn't one of those blogs.

But you will get total honesty from me, whether something turns out the way I wanted it to or not. Clearly this goes in the "not" pile. As you can easily see from the pictures, the cake stuck stubbornly to the sides of the pan and refused to let go. I knew I was going to have trouble when I took the cake out of the oven and had a hard time getting the sides of the cake to loosen from the pan with a rubber spatula. 

This unfortunate scenario could be blamed on one, two or both factors: one, I didn't flour the pan after I sprayed it with nonstick (ha, what a misnomer) cooking spray. Normally I can skip that step and I don't like to flour a pan too much as I invariably have a heavy hand with the flour and patches of flour tend to show up in the baked cake. But then you can literally see the down side of not oiling and flouring the pan properly.

Two, I misread the directions and didn't beat the eggs enough before adding the sugar. I added the sugar too soon and beat both eggs and sugar together for the time I was supposed to just beat the eggs alone. That created more of a meringue texture when baked which always leads to stick-to-the-sides-of-the-pan trouble. 

It's really unfortunate that this cake only half came out of the Bundt pan as what did come out and what I managed to salvage was actually quite tasty. Good texture, good lemon flavor. Just a sad appearance.

This recipe makes a lot of batter so I ended up putting the overflow batter into smaller tart pans and muffin cups. Which thankfully yielded the mini cakes more or less in whole shape, unlike its poor Bundt cake brethen.

Cake

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons lemon zest

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 1/4 cups whole milk

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed

Lemon Glaze

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

3-5 tablespoons lemon juice

Lemon Sugar Topping

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a bundt pan liberally with nonstick cooking spray then lightly flour.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking power and salt; set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat eggs on low speed until thickened and very pale yellow in color. Slowly add sugar to running mixer and increase speed to medium high until mixture is light and fluffy. Stir in vanilla, lemon juice and lemon zest.
4. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix  on low speed until combined.
5. In a small saucepan, heat milk and cubed butter until milk is very hot and butter is just melted. Do not boil; Whisk mixture to combine. Pour into batter and mix until smooth. Batter will be very thin.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 27-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Remove cake from oven and let cool for 5 minutes in pan. Loosen sides with a small spatula and turn over onto a cake platter to release. Cool cake until just warm to the touch.
7. Meanwhile, prepare glaze: whisk powdered sugar and lemon juice, using enough lemon juice to achieve desired consistent. Drizzle glaze over warm cake.
8. Lemon Sugar topping: thoroughly mix lemon zest and sugar together and let sit for 5 minutes. Sprinkle over top of glazed cake just before glaze sets.