For the Love of Lemon Cake - Part 1

I never really knew how much I loved lemon cake until I noticed that I had chosen it for my wedding cake. At the top of my blog page is my famous fabulous lemon pound cake covered with a pucker your puss lemon glaze - YUMMMM! That was my choice for my birthday cake last year - please don't count the candles. If you had asked me what my favorite cake was, I would have said pound, or carrot. But when I think about it, I truly do love a good lemon cake.

On this past Saturday I happened upon an episode of the Barefoot Contessa which featured a lemon cake that caught my attention. Since I had all the ingredients, I decided to try my hand at Ina Gartens' lemon yogurt cake. Lemon is what this cake truly is. The fresh lemon flavor is awesome. However, I do have a number of complaints about it. First of all, the texture is like a brand new sponge that has been used to soak up an oil spill. The word unanimously used to describe this cakes texture was "weird". The cake also browned too fast on the outside while leaving the inside somewhat undercooked. It ended up looking more like a loaf of cornbread than a lemon cake. By the way, I refuse to take credit for the problems with this cake, since I noticed comments on the food network website with the exact complaints that I had.



Needless to say I won't be using this recipe again. However, this leads me to revisit an unfinished pursuit of an awesome lemon cake to add to my cake list to satisfy customer request -Hmm, my birthday is coming up. Maybe I'll be my first lemon cake customer. I guess this means "For the Love of Lemon Cake" will be continued.

Happy Healthy New Year

After all of the chocolate cake binging in December my body is craving something more sensible. Instead of the traditional black eyed peas and collards, I made black eyed pea and collard green soup - and we loved it! Now on to the sweet stuff... I made a half hearted attempt at a refined sugar free refined flour free dessert - some sort of zucchini carrot raisin pineapple bread that turned out to be a near miss.


Due to not wanting to follow a recipe or measure, it was too wet and absolutely not sweet enough. I used whole wheat pastry flour, flaxseed, applesauce, molasses, and agave nectar. All of those were good choices, but too much wet and not enough dry. Of course I had to salvage as much of it as I could. So I turned it into a bread pudding by adding whole wheat bread, more raisins, a handful of walnuts, a half cup of brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons of butter - ok 3. Anyway, I love it.



Honesly, at first glance I wanted to call the final outcome Yuck Bread. My husband took one look at it and walked away. But with a bit of creativity and a nice serving dish, it actually turned out to look almost as good as it tasted. So I guess I'll call it Z'Bread Pudding. With a dollop of cream on top (preferably ice cream), it's the best thing for keeping a resolution of good healthy eating and endulging in some sweet tooth therapy at the same time.

Cupcake Therapy

The plan was laid out - take the little one to GranMaMahs for NYE and have an adult dessert - Tiramisu. I spent a nice chunk of the day gathering the ingredients to make even the ladyfingers from scratch. Then, the plan fell through. The little one stayed home and the dessert plan changed to a more brat friendly option - cupcakes. Not, I repeat, Not my thing. In fact, I find them to be a major pain in the tail. The recipe was fine, vanilla cupcakes from Billy Reece on Martha Stewarts website. I like the one bowl concept, even though it worked out to be 2 bowls for me.












But I just don't like all the fuss, the icing, the pastry bags, the overflow of cupcake batter. What a mess.

Now the little one thought the whole project was just a joy.

And I don't blame her one bit - she didnt have to clean up - all she had to do was eat em up!


So they turned out OKAY as far as I'm concerned. I much prefer a more sophisticated treat - like the Tiramisu I originally had on my mind. But who can resist putting a smile on a kids face?... and filling her mouth at the same time so I don't have to hear any whining about not going to GranMaMahs. I guess in the end, cupcake therapy worked out for both of us. :)

The Josephine Baker Story

The cake of the week is banana chocolate chip, which I have decided to call the Josephine Baker cake - it's rich, it's sexy, it's fun, and very classy - and Miss Josephine was definitely a chocolate sista who was very well known for her way of rockin' that skirt of bananas. My inspiration for this cake is the banana chocolate chip layer cake I so loved at Cafe Intermezzo in Atlanta - Lord how I miss that place. I called and got the "desert concierge" to describe the cake to me, and I went on my own from there. What I came up with... 4 layers of moist banana cake resting comfortably between blankets of fresh bananas and dark chocolate ganache - then covered in more ganache and a million mini chocolate chip morsels. Delicious, although not yet flawless.
The pros - finally a banana cake that's not too dense and perfectly moist. The cons - its hard to find good mini chips - the Nestle ones are so bad I couldn't eat them - just for decoration. Also, the layers are too thick - next time it will be 6 thin layers. This will really make for a beautiful and statuesque cake, much like its namesake. This is probably my 5th attempt at getting this cake right. My husband agrees I'm getting close. Overall, I'm at the doorstep of chocolate banana heaven.