May ABC challenge: Lemon Buttermilk Cake

This month's challenge was "teacake", that being a simple cake that doesn't include a lot of other components, but is eaten rather plain.  With an abundance of lemons, I made this Maida Heatter recipe (which was noted as being slightly adapted from her New Book of Great Desserts.)  Compared to this lemon cake I made several years ago, this one was much less expensive to make, although not as rich.  I modified it further from the recipe to suit my taste and ingredients on hand.

Here's what I used:

1/2 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups granulated sugar

3 large eggs

2 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 3/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

3 tablespoons lemon juice

Finely grated rind of 3 large lemons (juice will be used for glaze)

Glaze

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1/3 cup granulated sugar

Grease well and flour lightly a 10-cup Bundt pan. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter until soft. Add the sugar and beat until well mixed. (I beat it until very light and fluffy.) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift the dry ingredients together; on low speed, add in three additions to the butter mixture, alternating with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the dry. Beat only until smooth after each addition, scraping the bowl frequently with a rubber spatula. Remove from the mixer and stir in the lemon rind and juice. (Rind can get caught up in the beaters.) Turn into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a cake tester gently inserted into the middle comes out clean and dry. The cake will be deeply golden brown and will have begun to pull away from the sides of the pan.

 

While the cake is baking, make the glaze. Mix the juice and sugar and let stand, stirring occasionally.

 

Remove the cake from the oven and let it stand in the pan for 5 minutes. Turn out onto a rack and place it over a large piece of foil. With a pastry brush, brush the glaze over the top, sides and tube of the hot cake. Let stand until completely cool.

 

 

 

The only change I made was to increase the salt slightly.  I also reduced the lemon juice a little before measuring by letting it sit out and evaporate, so that it was a little more concentrated.  It finished baking in an hour.  Also, the original recipe calls for dusting the pan with bread crumbs rather than flour.  I tried this, but wasn't happy with the results.  For one, it's more fiddly.  But more importantly, the surface of the cake had a very loose, uneven, sloppy-looking crumb.  I've never had a problem with excess flour being visible on my cakes, even chocolate, so although this is Ms. Heatter's favorite technique, I won't be using it in the future.

I experienced a rare mishap in that the cake broke while turning it out of the pan.  I blame myself.  I guess because of the suggestion to use bread crumbs, I got it in my head that the cake would be difficult to get out, and so was a little rough with it.  It probably would have turned out fine if I'd used my usual technique.  The cake was delicious, and extremely light and fluffy the first day.  (It firmed up slightly by the following day, which I actually preferred.)  However I found it somewhat overly sweet.  The sugar level was fine where you got the tart lemon glaze, but the glaze hadn't soaked in as much as I'd expected, so much of the cake didn't benefit, and although it had a lovely texture, it didn't have much lemon flavor.

Conclusion:  The recipe was too good to disregard completely.  I'm inclined to skip the lemon altogether, add vanilla, and use the recipe that way (reducing the sugar by maybe 1/2 cup.)  However, if I did use the lemon again, I'd make a layer cake so the glaze was more evenly distributed and use whipped cream filling.  (Alternatively, poke the cake prior to applying the glaze so it actually enters the interior.)

Recipe:  Maida Heatter's Lemon Buttermilk Cake via Food 52