Lemon Pound Cake

For yet another hallway dinner - this time with a theme of German-speaking countries - I settled on a lemon pound cake (Zitroenenkuchen, from Germany or Switzerland). Most of the recipes I found, however, used about 4-5 eggs, which do not go along with my baking ideals.

Therefore, I adapted an egg-free pound cake recipe I found on Veg Recipes of India, and soaked that in a lemon glaze/syrup. This recipe is amazingly easy and has such a soft, moist cake that is very pleasing to eat. After the cake was thoroughly soaked in the lemon syrup, I iced the top with a lime icing, just because I had half a lime laying around from making another dish.

The yellow color of this came comes mostly from butter. It has quite a hefty amount of butter (1/2 cup of melted butter, 200 g unmelted) which deterred me at first. Not finding many other options, however I gave it a try. If it wasn't so yellow, I may have had added a drop of food coloring, but it was unnecessary.

In addition to the lemon juice used in the syrup soaking into the cake, and a tiny bit of lemon juice in the batter, the zest of 2 lemons was mixed into the batter, adding to the overall fragrance of the cake.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 200 g butter
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2/3 cup (200 g) condensed milk
• 1/2 cup milk (I used soymilk)
• 2 lemons, zested and juiced
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/4 lime
• 50 g icing sugar + some more 

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, and baking soda and set aside.
3. In a saucepan, melt the butter. Once melted, add in the condensed milk and whisk until homogeneous.
4. Warm the milk in a pan or in the microwave (about 30 seconds in the microwave were sufficient). Add to the butter and condensed milk mix.
5. Whisk in the sugar, lemon zest and 1 tbs of the lemon juice.
6. Add the sifted flour mix, and mix until homogeneous.
7. Bake for 30-50 mins (depending on the oven) or until a toothpick inserted in comes out dry.
8. While baking, mix the remaining lemon juice with about 50 of icing sugar. It should be more like a syrupy glaze rather than liquid. Add icing sugar as seen fit.
9. Using a skewer or toothpick, poke deep holes throughout the baked cake. The more holes the better, but do not break the cake.
10. Spoon or pour the lemon syrup glaze over the top of the cake so that it soaks into the holes.
11. Leave the cake in the pan for at least another 10 mins.
12. Mix some icing sugar with lime juice. The icing should be white-ish, and relatively thick while still being somewhat runny.
13. Ice cake as seen fit.