Cakes

Mini Meyer Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cakes

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When you buy a bag of Meyer lemons, you need to use that bag of Meyer lemons.  I made these lovely lemon pudding cakes a few weeks ago and loved the flavor of the Meyer lemons, sweeter than a regular lemon but still tart.  How could I go wrong by using them in a lemon pound cake?

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I’ve been on a kick with this cookbook lately.  It’s a great resource and it’s where I found the recipe for this pound cake.  I’ve made a cold oven pound cake before that is really special, but is pretty involved, whipping egg whites and such.  This cake come together quickly and uses a food processor to mix the wet ingredients so that curdling isn’t an issue thanks to the quick mixing speed.

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You can make this pound cake in an 8-inch loaf pan or in mini loaf pans, which is what I chose to do so that I could give these as gifts.  I added lemon juice, lemon zest and poppy seeds to the classic pound cake recipe to make these cakes.  From what I can tell, this would create a fantastic plain pound cake as well and I’ll probably be trying it soon.

The flavor of this cake is perfectly lemony.  The texture is light and the crust is slightly crunchy and totally delicious. I think it’s sugaring the pans, one of my favorite things to do with quick breads, and now with pound cake.  The small loaf pans allow you to have a small piece that still looks complete instead of cutting a larger piece in half.  I think these would be perfect for a brunch, bay shower, tea party, etc.

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Mini Meyer Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cakes

Adapted slightly from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Makes 1 8-inch pound cake or 4 mini loaves

Ingredients

Cake

  • 1 1/2 cups cake flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 4 teaspoons Meyer lemon juice
  • zest of one lemon
  • 4 eggs, room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 2 sticks of butter, melted and hot
  • 1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Glaze

  • 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
  • 6-9 teaspoons Meyer lemon juice

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Grease and sugar your pan/s.
  3. To make the cakes: Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl, then set aside.
  4. In the food processor combine the sugar, lemon juice, zest, eggs and vanilla and mix until combined, about 10 seconds.  With the processor still running, pour in the melted butter through the tube in a slow, steady stream.  Transfer the mixture to a large bowl.
  5. Sift 1/3 to half of the flour mixture over the wet ingredients and whisk until almost no flour is visible.  Repeat with the remaining flour in 1 or 2 more additions.  Whisk in the poppyseds just to combine and be careful not to overmix.
  6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan/s.  If you use mini loaf pans, 2 cups of batter each is about right.
  7. Bake for 40 minutes (for mini loaves) and 50-60 minutes for an 8-inch loaf until a cake tester comes out with a few crumbs.
  8. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and let cool on a wire rack.
  9. To make the glaze: after sifting the sugar add lemon juice, start with 1 tablespoon, then add juice one teaspoon at a time until it reaches the consistency you desire.  Drizzle onto the cooled cakes.

Calzones and Cake

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My birthday and our wedding anniversary are exactly one week apart.  This makes the dates easy to remember, but its hard to have  two celebrations so close together.  For my birthday, Ben took me to Boot Hill Saloon in Vega, Texas.  It was a really fun experience and we had a great meal.  If you live in the Amarillo area and haven’t yet been there, then I encourage you to make the trip to Vega.

For our anniversary, we couldn’t decide what to do.  We figured we’d eat at home, so I decided to make something a little out of the ordinary.  I made two different kinds of calzones, and they were both pretty delicious.

The meaty version was a Philly Cheese Steak Calzone.  I grilled a strip steak, sliced it up thinly, sauteed onion and green peppers and topped it all off with provolone cheese.

The veggie version was spinach, cheese and mushroom.  I sauteed the spinach with some garlic and squeezed it dry.  Then I mixed the spinach with ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.  These ingredients alone would be perfect, but I added some sauteed mushrooms.

I tried a new recipe for dough, and I liked it a lot.  It rose well and was incredibly easy to roll out and make the calzones.  The only issue we had was that we had to break out the steak knives to cut through the bottom of the calzone.  Other than that, the dough had a good chew and good flavor.

I doubled the dough recipe and only baked 6 calzones for dinner and for leftovers this weekend.  I made the other 6 dough balls into calzones and froze them to thaw out and eat later.  It is so nice to have homemade meals in the freezer.  As long as you can remember to put them in the fridge the morning before you plan to enjoy them, kitchen time is cut to a minimum….as is clean up!

The recipe for the dough came from My Kitchen Cafe.  It is a French dinner roll recipe used as calzone dough, so I will probably try it for rolls at some point.  You make the dough as you would for the rolls, but divide the dough into about 6 pieces after the first rise for the calzones.

The Philly calzones recipe is also courtesy of  My Kitchen Cafe and the spinach and cheese came from Tyler Florence, although I did make a few changes.  All the recipes are at the bottom of this post.

Now, on to the cake.  I had planned for us to eat my Daring Bakers July dessert for our anniversary.  But when Ben got home from work he had a lovely pink box with him that contained this beautiful cake!

It was such a great surprise.  The cake was made by Cara Linn Cakes in Amarillo.  I took a cake decorating class from her a few months ago.  She is a great teacher, and is incredibly talented.  I am so pleased to have someone like her in Amarillo.  If you are a fan of the Food Network challenges, then you may have seen Alisa Strauss on a few of the cake challenges.  Cara interned for her in New York, before opening her own store.  If you’re not impressed by this, you should be!

The cake not only looked beautiful, it tasted even better.  The cake itself was a dense vanilla that was sweet and delicious, but not a fake sweet like cake mixes and most bakery cakes.  The buttercream was strawberry, that had actual pieces of strawberry in it.  Yum.  The fondant that covers the cake is unique in that it looks smooth and beautiful and it tastes good!  Cara changed my opinion of fondant.

If you are in need of a cake, cupcakes, or other sweet treats, please call Cara.  She was a huge help to my husband when he ordered the cake and she does an incredible job.  The cake classes are well worth your time and money.  I had such a fun time and I learned a lot.  You also get to take your cake creation home!

Read on for the calzone recipes.

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Buttermilk Cakes

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I made SmittenKitchen’s raspberry buttermilk cake a few weeks ago.  The cake was so lovely that I decided to try it with some different additions.  Since I had blueberries, half a bag of raw blanched almonds and a tube of almond paste already on hand…that’s what I used.  The other ingredients in the cake are readily accessible in a bakers kitchen; 1 egg, 1/2 stick butter, sugar, flour, buttermilk (You can make your own!) baking soda, powder, salt and sugar.  Easy.

blueberry2Buttermilk Cake #1

The first cake I made was a blueberry almond cake and it was, in my opinion, incredibly delicious.  Tart and juicy blueberries in a sweet, tender and moist cake with crunchy almond paste crumbs on top.  The blueberries sank into the batter as it baked, but the almond paste stayed on top so it was able to get a little brown and crunchy.  I sprinkled regular granulated sugar on top as well.  I did not use lemon zest in the cake.  I thought it might not combine well with the almond, but it would probably be great.

I get so worried about overcomplicating a dish that I tend toward simple flavors and fairly normal ingredients.  If you want something crazy, make this.  It grosses me out a bit, but my 7th grade Texas History teacher, Mr. Dennis, made this for us as a Christmas treat when I was in his class, and it was good…so maybe Velveeta cheese is better for more than Cheater Queso?  If you’d like to make a bit more work of your queso…try this. After reading this post and drooling on my keyboard, I might have to try it as well.

Back to buttermilk…the possibilities are endless with this cake.  This recipe is definitely one I will be experimenting with.  It lends itself to fruit additions perfectly, but I would be willing to try chocolate pieces and various nuts as well.  Pecans and walnuts would be tasty.

Buttermilk Cake #2

I absolutely love almond, so next I tried a cake with chopped almonds in the batter and a sprinkle of the almond paste on top as I did this last time.  I used 1/3 white and 1/3 brown sugar in this cake, 2 ounces of chopped toasted almonds in the batter and about 2 ounces of crumbled almond paste on top.

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