Oops, I did it again — another look at lemon cake.

As I have mentioned before, I’m kind of into the lemon thing, and if you’re new here, I hope you will scroll down to the search box, type in “lemon” and have a look around. I haven’t seen too many new ideas on the boards though. This week, I wanted to make a square lemon cake, kind of like the Starbucks one, but not a loaf. After looking around at different recipes, I decided to go out and try my own. The result was the following.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3/4 cup butter (softened)
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• juice of one lemon
• 1/2 cup reduced-fat sour cream
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• zest of one lemon

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Grease bottom and sides of a metal 9×9 pan.
• Mix butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
• In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients, and then add the zest of the lemon on top.
• Add the eggs one at a time
• Add the vanilla, sour cream and lemon juice and mix well.
• Add half of the dry ingredients and mix until fully incorporated.
• Add the other half until the batter is smooth.
• Pour batter into the pan and bake for 35 minutes.
• Test with a toothpick to make sure it’s done.

Once cake has cooled completely, pour glaze over the top (see below)

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First, mix together the butter and sugar.

Then add the eggs, one at a time, blending in each one separately.

Next, add the sour cream, vanilla and lemon juice.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. You can sift them together, or just whisk together to make sure there are not any clumps.

Add the zest of the lemon.

Next, add half of these dry ingredients to the mixing bowl, and blend them together until smooth. Then add the rest and repeat that process.

In addition to greasing the pan, I also lined the bottom with parchment paper. I don’t think you have to do this, but I feel it makes the cake a lot easier to remove from the pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes depending on your oven. Basically, the cake is done when you can insert a knife or toothpick that comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool completely, and then remove from the pan. I slid a knife along the sides, just to make sure that nothing got stuck. I flipped the cake out onto a cutting board, and then back over onto a plate that was covered in wax paper.

Before adding the glaze, I decided to try something a little different, taking a cake pop stick and poking holes in the top of the cake, inserting it about half-way through the cake. I thought this would be pretty tasty when the glaze was poured over the top, and to be honest, the technique did not disappoint.

Next, I mixed together the glaze, which was:

• 4 Tbs milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp lemon extract
• 1 cup confectioners sugar.

These were whisked together in a measuring cup until smooth, and then poured over the cake. I also used a knife to even out the glaze distribution.

The result was a yummy, moist lemon cake with a surprisingly delicate flavor. And those wells of glaze were the bomb.