Strawberry Lemonade Pie

Summertime in Augusta, Georgia is oppressively hot. Oh, I know it's only May and all, I know it's barely summer, but yesterday was 97 degrees and it feels like August feels everywhere else I've lived. Perhaps that's why it's named Augusta. The air here is pregnant with water- its holding all the water it can without actually raining. Step outside, and it's like stepping into a foggy bathroom after a hot shower.

So what do we do in sticky humidity, when the chocolate chips are melting in the jar on the counter because someone in this family thinks air conditioning is for wimps? We make icebox pie. And because it is strawberry season, and because nothing refreshes like bright, tart lemon, and because Martha was kind enough to publish this recipe in her June magazine, we make Strawberry Lemonade Icebox Pie.

Now to me, icebox pie is something that you don't bake, like a eggless cheesecake or chocolate pudding pie. This pie you bake (and I was very loath to turn on the oven, believe me), so it baffled me where the icebox part came in.

The answer is, you absolutely must refrigerate this thing, or else the butter in the crust and the juice from the strawberries and egg whites (if you go there) make a big soggy mess. We first ate it after letting it sit on the counter for hours, and it was a little soupy, but the leftovers stored in the fridge were the proper consistency. So I wouldn't recommend it for all-day-in-the-sun cookouts, but it would work great for a party where you can keep it cold until eating time.

Strawberry-Lemonade Icebox Pie, from Martha Stewart Living June 2011 Issue

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Get out your 9-in pie or tart pan.

Crust

10 graham crackers, zipped into a ziplock pounded into smithereens with a rolling pin. Or pulsed in a food processor until fine.

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 t coarse salt

5 T unsalted butter, melted

Mix 1 1/3 cup of the graham cracker crumbs with the 1/4 cup sugar and the 1/4 t coarse salt. Add the butter and mix with a fork until moist and thoroughly combined. You can also do all this in the food processor.

Press the mixture firmly into the sides and bottom of the pie dish using your fingers or a dry measuring cup. Freeze for 30 minutes. (Or 15, as the case may be.)

Once chilled, bake the crust for 10 minutes in the 375 oven, until golden brown. Remove the crust and reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees.

Meanwhile, make the filling.

so many yellow ingredients!

Filling

1 14-oz can of sweetened condensed milk

2/3 cup strained fresh squeezed lemon juice (from 4-6 lemons)

2 large egg yolks (reserve whites for meringue)

1 large egg

Coarse salt

Whisk all these ingredients together and pour into the pre-baked crust. (It's ok if it's still warm). Bake at 325 until the center is set, 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature. Then refrigerate for at least 3 hours (the icebox part).

30 minutes before the 3 hours are up, prepare the topping.

Topping

12 oz (2 cups) sliced strawberries (just use a whole quart).

2 tablespoons sugar plus 1/2 cup and 2 tbs sugar

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

3 large egg whites, room temperature

Sprinkle the strawberries with the 2 tbs sugar and lemon juice, and let stand for about 30 minutes.

OPTIONAL MERINGUE: While the strawberries are standing, heat the egg whites with the 1/2 cup plus 2 tbs sugar in a heat-proof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, stirring until the sugar is dissolved and the egg whites are warm.

Using a handheld or counter mixer, whip the egg whites at high speed until medium peaks form.

Now assemble! Drain the juice from the strawberries and spoon them over the lemon pie. If you want you can stop here, it will be fab fabby fab. A delectable dessert flavored with the vibrant colors of red and yellow.

However, if you chose the meringue, spread the whipped egg whites over the strawberries. Toast the meringue using a kitchen torch or the broiler in your over. The broiler is RISKY. BUSINESS. Check it every minute AT LEAST. I swear my pie was only in the oven for 3 minutes and here's what it looked like, not pretty:

Still quite tasty though.

Lemon-Basil Creme Brulee

A man eating at the restaurant said that this is the best creme brulee he's ever had. Its faintly herbaceous, and in this way it kind of reminds me of the fresh mint ice cream I made all summer. The flavor is subtle but complex, and definitely a worth detour from your every day vanilla.

I made this batch with some of the last of the basil that came out of the garden at the restaurant. We're lucky with late freezes here in Georgia (this was in December).

Lemon Basil or another variety would also be great as flavoring for creme brulee, and fresh please, preferably picked from your garden. (I realized for most of this is difficult because it is January)

For 6 servings...

6 ramekins

Casserole dish for water bath

3 cups heavy cream

3 oz (about a tad less than 1/2 cup) sugar

6 eggs yolks

Grated zest of two lemons

1 cup packed basil leaves

extra sugar for caramelizing the tops of the brulees

Heat the cream in a medium saucepan. Add the lemon zest.  Wash the basil and stir it into the cream, then let steep for an hour to meld the flavors.

Towards the end of the hour, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and gather your ramekins. You will need approximately 6. Prepare a water bath for them to bake in- a 9 x 13 baking dish works well. Place the ramekins in the pan and pour very hot water around them, half way up their sides.

Strain the cream to remove the basil leaves and lemon zest. Reheat the cream until quite warm. In a medium bowl, whisk the yolks with the sugar, until the yolks are pale and fluffy.

Gradually add in the hot cream, whisking constantly. If you move too fast through this stage you will have little bits of cooked egg in your creme brulee, and nobody wants that. Slowly add the cream until it is all well combined. Try not to make too many bubbles on the surface of the custard mixture as you do this.

Pour the custard mixture through a strainer (to remove rouge egg bits) into a spouted container and divide the custard mixture evenly between the ramekins.

Bake for 30 plus minutes until the edges of the brulees are set and the centers are still a little loose. Sometimes, in certain ovens, my creme brulees take closer to an hour. However, even if they look a bit loose when you pull them, they will firm up better than you'd guess once chilled.

Cool the custards completely before refrigerating (in the water bath if you're worried about them setting, out of the bath if you're confident they're good to go). They won't completely set until they've been chilled in the fridge.

When ready to serve, caramelize the tops of the brulees. Pour about a tablespoon of sugar on the surface of the brulee, shake it around to cover it completely, then dump off the excess. With a kitchen torch, blast that sugar from 2 or 3 inches away, until evenly browned. You can do this in two layers if you want a thicker crunchy top.

If you don't have a propane or kitchen torch, you can use broiler in your oven, but watch them carefully.

Lemon-Ginger Creme Brulee

I make Creme Brulee at least twice a week at the restaurant. Until recently I stuck to chocolate and vanilla, but I've branched out and results have been fantastic.

The cool thing about creme brulee is that you can flavor it with pretty much anything you can steep in cream. You can use anything from ground spices and liquors to herbs and fruits. Try thyme, citrus zest, mint, lavender, cardamom, mocha, etc!

I've also recently found out that there is a cart in San Francisco that sells really creative flavors of creme brulee on the street. Next time I'm in San Francisco (which will be the first time I'm in San Francisco), I definitely plan on braving the streets and the lines to try this creamiest of desserts.

The flavor is courtesy of David Lebovitz, in Ready for Dessert, who tells us that ginger contains an enzyme that will prevent the custard from setting unless you parboil it first. Good to know, David! I would've wasted a lot of cream and eggs with out that valuable information.

The base recipe is divine, it's from the Le Cordon Bleu Professional Baking book, and you need look no further for your use-for-everything creme brulee recipe. It's very similar to Lebovitz's.

Lemon Ginger Creme Brulee Recipe (makes 6 servings, half of the recipe I make at the restaurant)

3 cups heavy cream

6 egg yolks

3 oz sugar (a tad less than a half cup)

pinch salt

3 oz thinly sliced ginger plus the grated zest of two lemons*

extra sugar for caramelizing the tops of the brulees

Slice ginger thinly and place in a medium saucepan. Add enough water to cover the ginger and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes, then pour off the water.

Add the cream and the lemon zest to the ginger. Heat until warm again and then let steep for an hour to meld the flavors.

Towards the end of the hour, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and gather your ramekins. You will need approximately 6. Prepare a water bath for them to bake in- a 9 x 13 baking dish works well. Place the ramekins in the pan and pour very hot water around them, half way up their sides.

Strain the cream to remove the ginger and much of the zest. Add the salt. Reheat the cream until quite warm. In a medium bowl, whisk the yolks with the sugar (you can also add the salt at this stage instead of adding it to the cream), until the yolks are pale and fluffy.

Gradually add in the hot cream, whisking constantly. If you move too fast through this stage you will have little bits of cooked egg in your creme brulee, and nobody wants that. Slowly add the cream until it is all well combined. Try not to make too many bubbles on the surface of the custard mixture as you do this.

Pour the custard mixture through a strainer (to remove rouge egg bits) into a spouted container and divide the custard mixture evenly between the ramekins.

You can cover the whole thing with aluminum foil if you're worried about the tops of the brulees browning, but I've found if you cook them in the low-middle of the oven, you don't need to worry about foil. Bake for 30 plus minutes until the edges of the brulees are set and the centers are still a little loose. In the whackadoo oven at the restaurant, this takes over an hour, but in normal ovens it should be closer to 30 minutes.

Cool the custards completely before refrigerating (in the water bath if you're worried about them setting, out of the bath if you're confident they're good to go). They won't completely set until they've been chilled in the fridge.

* for vanilla creme brulee, omit the lemon zest and ginger, adding half of a scraped vanilla bean plus the pod to the cream (You will strain the pod out later) Heat the cream and let steep for only a few minutes (opposed to an hour) before adding it to the yolks. A slick trick to avoid clumps of vanilla seeds in the milk is to rub them into some of the sugar that you are using, then put both rubbed sugar and seeds in the cream. If you have no vanilla bean, use about 1 teaspoon good quality vanilla extract...but the resulting brulees won't have exciting flecks of vanilla bean in it.

For serving, grab your kitchen, brulee or small propane torch. Guess what we use at the restaurant? Thats right, the propane torch.

Sprinkle the top of the brulee with sugar and knock off the excess. Blast with the torch until melted but not brown. Sprinkle on another layer of sugar and blast this layer until the sugar is brown and caramelized. Do this step carefully, you don't want black tops to your carefully baked dessert. Nobody wants that.

Let's be real, not all of us have access to a torch. There are other options, but you must choose one because custard with no caramel on top can never be called creme brulee (which I suspect means something to do with "burnt" in french, the sugar being burnt in this case.) (Yep, I was right, it means burnt. Thanks Google.)

You can either sprinkle with sugar and use your oven broiler to try to caramelize the tops, or you can make caramel (with only sugar and water or even just sugar) and pour a thin layer on top of the brulee, swirling it to make it even. Be careful not to burn yourself. Nobody wants that.

Lemon Raspberry Cake

This cake is a real hit at the restaurant; I make it once a week. I love how the red raspberry filling pops with color next to the white frosting and cake. Eating this cake feels like summer, so make it soon as a farewell tribute to this hottest of seasons.

And really, though those of you up north may be mourning the end of summer, I am still dying from heat here. Last weekend we stole up to North Carolina and Virginia for a few days, and the crisp air there hinted at fall in a way that is torturing me still. I am so ready for the trees to change color, for the necessity of cardigans, for halloween, for my birthday, for woodsmoke, for pumpkins...

Excuse me, what was I talking about? Oh yes, back to the summery Lemon Raspberry Cake. It's very good. The frosting is fluffy and and not too sweet, the same one that's on the Golden Summer Cake, with the addition of lemon juice.

Lemony Layers (from the Baked cookbook)

2 1/2 cups cake flour

3/4 cup AP flour

1 T bakng powder

1 t baking soda

3/4 t salt

1 stick butter, softened

1/2 cup vegetable shortening, room temp

1 3/4 cup sugar

1 T vanilla extract

grated zest of one lemon

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups ice water

3 large egg whites, room temp

1/4 t cream of tartar (or lemon juice or vinegar)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and line three 8 in cake pans with parchment rounds.

Sift together the flours, baking powder and soda, and salt.

Cream the butter and shortening together in an electric mixer using the paddle attachment on medium speed, about 3 minutes. Add the sugar, vanilla and lemon zest and beat another 3 minutes. Scrape the bowl and add the egg, beating until just combined.

Using low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and the ice water. Scrape the bowl and mix for a few more seconds.

Using a spotless bowl, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks (not stiff peaks) form. Fold the egg whites into the batter.

Divide the batter among the three pans and bake for 30-40 minutes (keep an eye on it, if your pans are 9 in instead of 8 then they'll bake faster). Test with a toothpick or thin knife. Let cool for 20 min and turn out onto racks to cool completely.

Lemony Frosting:

1 pound butter, softened

2 cups heavy cream

1/2 to 1 pound confectioner's sugar, to taste

juice from three lemons

Combine the first three ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer and whip the the whisk attachement for at least ten minutes, until the frosting is smooth and creamy and light. Add the lemon juice and whip until combined.

To assemble cake, spread the lemon frosting on each layer, topping each one with raspberry jam or filling. Finish with swirly peaks of lemon frosting on the top.

It's the perfect birthday cake for those who don't care for chocolate. (Whoever those people are).

Lemon Tart

I love lemon curd. I like it swirled into cheesecake, I like it sandwiched between cake layers, I like to eat it with a spoon, still warm in the bowl.

This lemon curd might actually be better called a lemon cream. It is light and so smooth and just plain ethereal. If something can be "plain" ethereal.

It's been so hot here, and I've been dealing with melted chocolate all over my kitchen and my clothes, so the accompaniment to the Peanut Butter Torte was this light, refreshing lemon tart. Which is deceiving because there's over 2.5 sticks of butter in it, so it's not really that light.

The secret is not melting the butter with the curd, but adding it at the end and blending it in with a blender, making it incredibly creamy and fluffy.

"The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart" by Dorie Greenspan

1 cup sugar

Grated zest of 3 lemons

4 large eggs

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from 4-5 lemons)

2 sticks plus 5 T unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-size pieces, at room temperature

1 9-in tart shell (recipe follows)

Grab a heat proof bowl and bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a saucepan. Put the sugar and the zest in the bowl, and rub them together until this sugar is moist and fragrant. Whisk in the eggs, then the lemon juice.

Set this bowl over the simmering water and start stirring once it's warm. The recipe says cook the curd until it reaches 180 degrees, but for me it never really got there. I'd say just cook until the whisk leaves tracks. I would say you could even skip the bowl part and cook it in the saucepan over really low heat until bubbles start forming. Don't heat too quickly, though, or your eggs will curdle, and stir, stir all the time.

Once the egg mixture has thickened and reached the appropriate temperature, remove the curd from heat and strain it into a blender or food processor. The straining is a pain but completely necessary as it removes the zest and any eggy bits that may have formed. Let the curd stand 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Turn on the blender and add the butter a little bit at a time. Make sure the curd keeps moving and scrape down the sides as you go. Once the butter is all incorporated, keep the blender going for about 3 more minutes to get it all nice and creamy/fluffy.

Pour the cream into a bowl, press a piece of plastic wrap to the surface and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. (3 hours was completely adequate for me.)

When you're ready to assemble the tart, stir up the cream to loosen it and spoon it into your waiting tart shell. It's best eaten the day you assemble it, but you can keep the curd by itself in the fridge for 4 days or freeze it for up to two months.

And the sweet dough tart shell....

1 1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

1/4 t salt

1 stick plus 1 T very cold butter, cut into small pieces

1 large egg yolk

Get out your handy food processor, and dump in the flour, confectioner's sugar and salt. Pulse a couple of times to combine, and then scatter the butter over the surface. Pulse until the butter is the size of peas, then add the egg yolk and pulse until it's all combined and clumpy. Don't over blend or your tart crust won't be flaky. Pull all the bits together into a ball and press it into a 9 in tart pan. (But don't press too hard or you'll have cement crust)

Freeze the crust for 30 minutes before baking*. Meanwhile, preheat to 375 degrees.

Now, take a piece of aluminum foil and rub butter on the shiny side. Press this buttered side onto the dough in the tart pan and bake the crust for 25 minutes. At this point, take out the crust, remove the foil, and press down the bottom with the back of a spoon if it's puffed up. Bake for another 8 min until the crust is golden. If the edges are getting too dark, you can cover them with aluminum foil.

Let the crust cool before filling.

* Extra steps like freezing always annoy me, but in this case, the freezing means you don't have to weigh down the bottom of your crust with pie weights or beans. I would much rather freeze than mess around with a bunch of dry beans.

Friends: this is one of my new favorite desserts. The crust is crunchy and fab and the cream is so silky and so good after a winter of chocolate. Welcome to spring.

Not that I'm over chocolate, by any means.

Lemon Curd and Blueberry Cheesecake

MMM!!! CHEESECAKE. It's been so long...

On Sunday our small group had a potluck, and I was just going to bring Spinach Artichoke Dip, which I love....

...but I realized that this was possibly the only occasion on the horizon for which I would have an excuse to make the Lemon Curd Cheesecake I've been dying to make for oh-so-long. I like making cakes for the restaurant, but I do miss the little test ramekins I got to enjoy when making cheesecake.

1. Lemon curd is delicious and deliciously easy to make. It is also very pretty. The final colors of the cheesecake reminded me of spring and easter...white with bright yellow and the purply blue of the blueberries.

2. Oh yes, I added blueberries. There was no reason not to. And they not only aesthetically enhanced the dessert, they provided much needed relief from the richness and tartness of the filling.

My spring form pan leaked a bit and so the crust ended up pretty soggy, but fortunately that is not something I mind. I'm not sure how it was received at the potluck, actually, because I had to leave early, but Eric loved it, and he's tough to please.

Lemon Curd Marbled Cheesecake, adapted from Gourmet, July 2006.

Preheat oven to 350. 1. Make Lemon Curd. 2. Make crust. 3. Make filling.

lemon curd

1 t finely grated lemon zest

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 stick of butter

Whisk together the zest, juice, sugar and eggs in a heavy saucepan. Add the butter (I melted mine first) and cook over med-low heat, whisking frequently, until the mixture has thickened and is bubbling.

Force the curd through a fine mesh sieve to remove the zest, then allow to cool.

Make your graham cracker crust by mixing 1 1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs, 1/3 cup sugar and a dash of salt with 5 T melted unsalted butter. Press into the sides and bottom of a 9-in springform pan and bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

Next, make the cheesecake filling. It's ridiculously easy, just blend 3 8-oz packages cream cheese in a stand mixture until smooth. Add 1 cup sugar and blend for 3-5 minutes. Add 3 eggs, one at a time, blending well between each. Mix in a teaspoon vanilla and 3/4 cup sour cream. DONE.

Now, pour half the filling into the spring form pan. Dot half the lemon curd over the filling and use a spoon or knife to swirl it into the filling. Then, if you're me, you'll sprinkle a handful of blueberries over the filling. (frozen or fresh, either works well.) Pour on the rest of the filling and swirl the rest of the lemon curd in.

Bake at reduced temperature of 300 degree in a water bath. Mine took about an hour and 15 minutes, and was a very soft set, but still cracked. The original recipe called for 40 minutes. Do what you will here, the end result will no doubt be amazing no matter what.

The only picture i could get of the finished cake...

Marbled Lemon Bluberry Cake

Just LOOK at this cake. I was so sad delivering it to the restaurant...I wanted to keep it and give it a nice home where it's appreciated.

I recently made another lemon blueberry cake, but if you had to chose one of the two cakes to put in your mouth, and one to donate to a clown show where they throw cake at each other, this cake would stay every time.

It features moist lemon layers swirled with blueberry, my homemade jam filling, and a divine lemon buttercream frosting. Topped with fresh blueberries, its irresistible.

This recipe adapted from Sky High. (a cookbook filled with a million incredible recipes.)

Lemon Blueberry Swirl Layers

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened.

2 cups sugar

1.5 t lemon extract

7 egg whites (yes, 7. with the leftover yolks, you can make creme brulee or icecream or pastry cream.)

3 cups cake flour

4 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1 1/4 cup milk

1 cup blueberry jam

Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and use parchment rounds 2 8 or 9-in round cake pans.

In an electric mixer bowl, cream the butter, sugar, lemon extract and zest until light and fluffy. Gradually add the egg whites 2 or 3 at a time, beating well between additions and stopping occasionally to scrape down the bowl.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, whisking gently to combine. In two or three alternating additions alternating additions, beat the dry ingredients and the milk into the butter mixture, scraping down the bowl several times. Beat on medium-high speed for about a minute to smooth and aerate the batter.

Scoop one cup of batter into a bowl. Divide the remaining batter among the three pans, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula.

Add two or three tablespoons blueberry jam to the reserved cup of batter and mix well. Drizzle heaping tablespoons over the pans of batter and use a butter knife to swirl the blueberry batter in short strokes. Don't over mix.

Bake for about 25 minutes (check early) or until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean and the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Let the cakes cool in their pans for ten minutes before inverting onto racks and allowing to cool completely.

Once cool, spread the blueberry jam on two of the layers and stack them, putting the third layer on top. Then frost the cake with Lemon Buttercream Frosting (Recipe follows).

Lemon Buttercream Frosting (adapted from Sky High)

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

2 eggs

3 sticks softened unsalted butter

2 T fresh lemon juice

2 t lemon extract

2 cups confectioner's sugar, or to taste and consistency (optional)

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water, stirring to dissolve. Bring to a boil without stirring until the sugar reaches approx 238 on a candy thermometer.

(I have just recently learned that sugar carmelizes around 350, so waiting until it looks like it might start turning colors is not the best method for those of us without a candy thermometer, but it has worked in my frostings so far.) (I now own a candy thermometer, purchased very cheaply at Walmart, and I must say it's nice to be sure.)

A couple minutes into the heating of the sugar, start beating the eggs in an electric mixer. When they have tripled in size and the sugar is heated, add the sugar in a thin stream while the mixer is going on high. Beat on medium high until the bowl feels cool. This can take up to 15 minutes.

Reduce the mixer to medium-low and add the butter 1 tablespoon at a time. When all the butter is added, mix until smooth and them add the lemon juice and extract. Frost your cake!! Add some blueberries!

Poppyseed Lemon Cake...fail?

Deb at Smitten Kitchen recently posted this Poppyseed Lemon Cake recipe, raving about the nutty flavor, the lemon scent and the airiness. I couldn't wait to try it; I love winter citrus recipes. This cake recipe was originally found in Food and Wine by Chef Kurt Gutenbrunner.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was disappointed. I loved all the little crunches that the poppyseeds made, and the first bite, all covered in powdered sugar was very nice, but after that I found it sort of bland. My mouth expected sweetness and lemon flavor that just wasn't there.

I looked at the recipe again and again, trying to tell just where I went wrong, and I'm 90% sure I followed it to the letter.

Maybe this cake requires a certain palette. But before I'd go and use 8 egg yolks on this cake again, I will definitely up the sugar and probably throw in some lemon juice.

I love all the recipes on Deb's site, as you can tell by the abundance of references to them on this blog. I would head right on over to Smitten Kitchen and check it out. And check out this cake- because the profound exuberance of the poppyseeds here is not to be ignored. There is something to it- be adventurous and figure out how you like it.

Lemon Cake with Blueberry Frosting

As we all know, I love blueberries. And in cakes, you just can't beat the Lemon-Blueberry combo, unless of course you are chocolate, which trumps all.

For this cake, I used the lemon layer cake recipe from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, Lemon Curd from a jar, and Buttercream flavored with Lemon, Lemon Curd and Blueberry Jam.

Lemony Layers

Preheat to 350, grease 3 round 9-in cake pans, line the bottoms with wax paper.

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs, room temperature

1.5 cups AP flour

1.5 cup self rising flour (I used AP flour plus 1.5 t baking soda.)

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 t lemon zest

Directions:

In an electric mixer, cream butter until smooth. Ad sugar and beat until fluffy, about 3 min. Add the eggs one at a time. Combine the flour and add in four parts, alternating with the milk, lemon juice and zest. Divide batter among cake pans and bake for 20-25 minutes until a cake tester inserted in the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Let cakes cool slightly before removing to a wire rack.

My notes: My cake baked fast and was overdone at 20 minutes. Maybe because of this, after a few days in the case at the restaurant, it was quite dry.

Buttercream:

The lemon buttercream recipe in the Magnolia cookbook was ridiculous! It called for 2 sticks of butter to 8 cups of powdered sugar, plus 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1 t lemon zest. It was way too dry and completely not enough. Also I ran out of lemon juice and used lemon curd so it wasn't lemony enough. The part I mixed with the bluebbery jam for the inside was very good, though.

Next time, I would make a big batch of butter cream, using about a pound of butter, maybe some whipping cream and a pound or so of powdered sugar. I would divide it in half and add 1/2 cup lemon juice and some zest to one part (maybe adding some more sugar to compensate and have the right consistency) and adding about 1/2 cup blueberry jam to the other part.

To assemble, brush the layers with lemon curd and stack with blueberry frosting in between. Spread the blueberry frosting almost, but not quite, to the edge of the layers. When all three layers are in place, spread a thin crumb coat of lemon frosting over the whole cake and refrigerate for a few minutes. Then glop on the rest of the lemon frosting. You can garnish with fresh blueberries or lemon peel curls.

Cranberry Lemon Chocolate Pound Cake

This confetti-looking cake is probably the only thing I've ever tasted that I could justify describing with the phrase "a party in my mouth." In fact, upon tasting the cake, one friend used those exact words. It also got rave reviews at The Restaurant.

Cranberry-Lemon-Chocolate. These are quintessential winter flavors, and the combination is just gorgey.* In fact, it inspires me to write a haiku.

zip cranberry tang

creamy lemon surrounds me

smooth chocolate rest

So anyway, make this cake for Christmas, and then again for Boxing Day, and for New Years, and for National Bird Day (jan 5), and for Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday(3rd monday in jan)...basically you're going to want any excuse to eat this cake!

Again, when making recipes that feature ounces instead of cups, just bite the bullet and just go buy yourself a kitchen scale. Make sure it switches between grams and ounces and other units of measure, and I got mine at the big box for 20 bucks.

Cranberry Lemon Chocolate Pound Cake

adapted from Cakelove (The original recipe used dried cranberries, and used fresh cranberries. The original also called for 2 T gin, but I just added that much more half and half and skipped the gin. Finally, these recipes always called for something called vanilla powder, which I just ignore all together.)

Preheat to 350.

Dry Ingredients:

13 oz (2.5 cups plus 1 T) AP flour

4 oz (1/2 cup) fresh cranberries, chopped. (hooray food processors!)

3 oz (1/4 cup) bittersweet chocolate

1/2 t salt

1/4 t baking soda

(Mix together and set aside)

Wet ingredients:

4 oz (1/2 cup) sour cream

3/4 cup half and half

1 lemon (zest it into the butter and then cut and separate the juice packets from the pith and membrane, put that part in with the liquid)

1 t vanilla extract

(mix together and set aside)

1.5 sticks butter, room temp

21 oz (2.5 cups plus 2 T) sugar

1 T lemon zest

5 eggs

Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer on low speed for 2 or 3 minutes. Add the lemon zest and the eggs, one at a time, blending thoroughly between each. Switch off adding the wet and dry ingredients, in 3-5 additions. Don't blend completely in-between- this step should only take a minute.

Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides, then blend on medium speed for 20-25 second to "develop the structure of the batter."

Pour the batter into a well greased bundt pan. Use any leftover for cupcakes (they cook better in cupcake papers than straight in the pan like muffins). Bake at 350 for about 40-50 minutes. Cupcakes will only take about 15. The cake is done when a knife comes out clean from the center.

The book says to let the cake cool for only 5-10 minutes before removing, but the first time I made, as you can tell by the picture above, I lost the top doing it this way. The second time, I let it cool completely before removing and it was fine. However, in ordinary circs you probably won't be able to wait til it's cooled to try it. I guess that's where the extra batter cupcakes come in.

I also made a glaze for my second cake. I heated jellied cranberry sauce from a can with sugar and water and put it through a strainer to make it finer. I brushed it on the cake with a pastry brush, and then brushed on a second layer of a paste made from a little cranberry mix, some rum, and some powdered sugar. I then put it in the oven for 5 min to let it sink in.

I'm going to try it with orange instead of lemon next!

* has anyone else read Freaky Friday? Annabelle loves the gorgey word.