Pounds of Love...

     I had never heard Mr. Bloom request a Lemon Glazed Pound Cake for dessert before.  When I asked what he wanted for dessert, I never thought those words would escape his lips!  I heard them though, and was I glad to hear them! Being that is one of my favorite desserts, I was excited to test a recipe out.   Who else should I have gone to, but good ol' Martha Stewart?  I never made a pound cake before, and I wanted it to be perfect.  I was already in a cooking mood, as I had made the pizza that evening.  Well, if you want to call it the day before, you can.  The pizza finished around 10 and after eating and relaxing, I want to say I started the cake around midnight!! I did not finish this cake until around 4:00 AM! Did I mention that I had to be at work at 10:00 in the morning? Haha.  Don't feel sorry for me, because I am a night owl.  I mean, we just got done at the movies and I felt the need to write this blog before bed! So, here goes...

THE INGREDIENTS

THE DIRECTIONS

Floured Pan

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, make sure to put the rack in the lowest position.  Butter and Flour your pan.  I always love to use Bundt Pans when I can.  They make your cake look a million times prettier.  I bought mine from Target.  It is Calphalon Kitchen Essentials.  I have other pots and baking pans that brand and have enjoyed them, thus far.  

• To butter my pan, I took a stick of butter and just  “wrote” all over my pan with it.  Make sure you get all the little crevices that a Bundt Pan entails.  I sprinkled the flour in the pan, and I made sure to rotate it as I sprinkled to get it to coat all of the butter.  

• I googled “how to zest” tips, but they weren’t much help! I did figure out a tip that helped me.  Make sure when you zest, that you go back and forth on the zester without lifting your zesting object (in this case, lemon).  I figured this out on the second cake I made.  (Don’t worry, I’ll post it soon!) 

•  To juice the lemon, I squeezed it over a strainer into a bowl.  You can probably strain through your hands, but I got a better handle on the lemon with two hands squeezing.   

•   In a small bowl, combine buttermilk with lemon zest and juice.    

• In a medium bowl whish together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.  If you notice, the ingredients specify that the flour needs to be spooned and leveled.  What does this mean? I went to GOOGLE for the answer.  If you know me, you know I google everything I need to know.  I learned from the link I posted, that it means to spoon the flour into the measuring cup, then level it off.  If you just scoop the flour out of the bag, you are probably compacting the flour.  This would give you way more than a cup of flour.  Baking is a science.  Sometimes if you don't have exactly what the recipe calls for, your end product may not come out right.  

• Then, I put the butter and sugar in my mixer.  The recipe calls for softened butter.  This is important! At first, my butter wasn’t soft enough so I put it in the microwave for a few seconds.  If it is not softened the butter and sugar will not become fluffy, like the recipe calls for.  Add the eggs one at a time.  Make sure to beat them well into the mixture before moving on to the next.

• With mixer on low, add flour mixture in three parts alternately with the buttermilk mixture in two, beginning and ending with flour. So, you really don’t have to think about it, it's: 

(Flour, buttermilk mixture, flour, buttermilk mixture, flour)

• It can get confusing in the wee hours of the morning!! Beat the mixture until it is smooth, but DO NOT over mix it! I presume that if you do, your cake will be less fluffy! Educated Guess. Haha. 

• Pour the batter into the pan, and bake for 50-60 minutes.  Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  I did not have a toothpick, so I used a fork.  Let the cake cool for 15 minutes in the pan.

• Turn the cake over onto a cooling rack, and let it cool completely (Don't get impatient!) before glazing! 

Now you need the GLAZE!! 

THE INGREDIENTS

• Place the powdered sugar in a medium bowl and stir in lemon juice.  The consistency was great.  I used 4 tablespoons of the fresh lemon juice.  I think in all I used two lemons.  This was VERY easy.  And makes a beautiful addition to a pound cake.  

• Set rack with the cake over a baking sheet lined with wax paper.  Pour the glaze over the cake and let it run down the sides.  There is no fancy way to do this.  I think a glaze automatically gives off a fancy look! Notice I did this on my cooling rack.  I didn't even notice the recipe said to do it over a baking sheet! Mind you, I started this cake at midnight.  I had to wait for it to bake and cool!! My cooling rack was not that hard to clean, so it didn't bother me much.  

• Let the glaze dry for 30 minutes.

• In my case, I covered it and called it a night! I didn't even try a piece! 

     So, we woke up in the morning to a Lemon Glazed Pound Cake.  What do you think we had for breakfast? Is that not in the commercials? Breakfast of Champions : Lemon Glazed Pound Cake! Well, it should be... it was delicious.  My first pound cake out of the way.  A Happy Husband with a Happy tummy was a plus! It's about 4:05 AM right now, so I shall go to bed and dream about this cake! 

With that, Enjoy! 

As usual, I paraphrase! If you want to see the full recipe with directions click HERE!