Meyer Lemon Pound Cake

I am so glad that I am back in Penang, that means I can hangout with my girlfriends CP Choong (also my baking guru on Rasa Malaysia) and Craft Passion (super-talented craft blogger). I met up with them and  told CP Choong to share new baking recipes on Rasa Malaysia, while I am on vacation eating around Penang and enjoying my kitchen days off.

This amazing looking and uber delicious Meyer Lemon Pound Cake is her creation. Since it’s springtime in the United States, and spring is meyer lemon’s main season of fruit production, this recipe is sure to please many people, if you love pound cake and  the exotic great taste and aroma of meyer lemon.

What’s more, she made a killer meyer lemon glaze for the pound cake…now that’s sinful and I am sure you just want to pick up a piece, or two or three pieces of this meyer lemon pound cake from your screen.

Other than this recipe, I also have two other pound cake recipes here and here and Rasa Malaysia. Enjoy!

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Blood Orange Buttermilk Pound Cake

It’s always around this time of year that we begin swimming in citrus and every meal (and drink!) has some splash of fragrant juice. You can call it a garden obsession, but we’re not far from being finished. Last week we planted another (our third) blood orange tree and it wasn’t in-celebration to grow more, but rather, to replace one blood orange tree that had completely died on us.

So this blog post has mixed emotions, both sadness for losing a beloved tree and joy of giving another tree life in our garden. We’re ready to move on and celebrate blood oranges.

Call it over-zealous gardening or perhaps too much attention to care which resulted in overwatering. After ten years, our beloved first blood orange tree completely died. We were in shock and speechless when it started to deteriorate after only 4 weeks of peaking out with hundreds of blood oranges. With still about one hundred pounds of blood oranges to pick, the tree quickly started to yellow and lose it’s leaves.

After many phone calls to nurseries, conversations with Master gardeners and hours researching online, the conclusion was that our tree was being over watered.

We killed our own tree? Did we really hurt it? After a phase of feeling guilt for nurturing the tree too much, we realized we shouldn’t be punishing ourselves for loving something too much. In fact, we saw it as a learning experience on how to care for older established trees and not baby-ing it like a toddler-tree.

As we said good-bye to our first blood orange tree for all the years of beautiful juice, zest, cocktails and love, we celebrated its contribution to our garden with this blood orange buttermilk pound cake. It’s delicious and beautiful, just like the tree that we loved so much.

We’re grateful for all the wonderful blood oranges that have graced our kitchen and hope you’ll enjoy this Seasons bounty of blood oranges too.

-diane and todd

Here’s some of our previous blood orange recipes you might enjoy:

Blood Orange Bars with Brown Butter Crust Recipe 

Blood Orange Margarita Recipe 

Blood Orange Pops Recipe

Blood Orange Ricotta Cookies Recipe 

Blood Orange Chocolate Chunk Cookies Recipe

Yield: 1 Loaf

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Adapted from Fine Cooking's Lemon Buttermilk Pound Cake. Our pound cake is made with blood orange juice and zest but to really highlight the flavor of blood oranges we will serve this loaf with a quick and easy blood orange sauce either drizzled over top or alongside to dunk in.

1 3/4 cups (220g) all-purpose flour1 teaspoon baking powder1/2 teaspoon kosher or sea salt1/2 cup (113g or one stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature1 cup (200g) sugarfinely grated zest of 2 blood oranges2 large eggs, at room temperature1/2 cup (120ml) buttermilk1/4 cup (60ml) fresh blood orange juice3 tablespoons (45ml) fresh blood orange juice1/2 cup (60g) confectioners’ sugarPreheat the oven to 325°F. Grease a 8.5 inch x 4.5 inch loaf pan.Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt for 20 seconds or until well combined. Set aside.Beat together the butter, sugar and blood orange zest until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes in a stand mixer. Scrape the sides of the bowl and beat in the eggs, one at a time until blended.Mix in 1/3 of the flour mixture until just combined. Mix in the buttermilk and blood orange juice until just combined. Mix in the remaining flour until just combined, making sure to scrape the sides of the bowl.Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 1 hour or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center. Let the cake cool for about 20 minutes. Gently remove the pound cake from the pan. Allow to cool completely.After the cake is completely cool, make the sauce. Whisk together the blood orange juice and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Spoon the sauce over the pound cake or serve alongside to dunk in.

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Matcha (Green Tea) Pound Cake

As an over-consumer of food magazines and Pinterest images, I’ve come to miss the cookie and cake pictures this month.

Now that the holidays are over, it seems like many of us have taken a hiatus from baking. January is supposedly the time for salads and soups and juice cleanses, right? At least, that’s what all the cooking magazines are telling me.

And healthy-eating-wise, I’ve been doing okay so far. I don’t get bagels with cream cheese or pizza slices three or four times a week anymore. But the baking? No no no. It’s so impossible to ween myself off it that I’m not even going to try.

Green tea pound cake is one of those foods that just has a lovely sound to it. It’s fragrant, light, complex, yet indulgent at the same time. As for this particular cake, the texture is nice and buttery like a pound cake should be, but also airy and doesn’t make you feel weighed down, even after a eating a few slices more than you should.

So if you, like me, haven’t taken a break from baking in January, do give this green tea pound cake a try. I adapted the original recipe from Food.com slightly, the biggest changes being adding more butter to make it less dry and green tea powder. (Love the stuff. What can I say?) It works in both a large or small loaf pan; the 9?x5? pan will yield a flatter cake, and a 8.5?x4.5? pan will yield a taller cake.

What are you baking or want to be baking this month?

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Matcha (Green Tea) Pound Cake

Makes 1 loaf

1 cup all-purpose flour1/2 teaspoon baking powder2 teaspoons green tea powder1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened2/3 cup sugar2 large eggs, beatenIn a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and green tea powder.In a separate large bowl or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Slowly beat in the eggs. Add the sifted flour mixture and mix until well-combined.Pour the batter into a buttered loaf pan (9?x5? pan will yield a flatter cake, 8.5?x4.5? will yield a taller cake). Bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pan.

Adapted from Food.com.

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More green tea desserts to try:

Tagged as: Breakfast, Dessert, Green Tea, Matcha, Recipes, Tea

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Pound cake with brandy soaked raisins for a low-key Christmas

Truth be told, I’m rather exhausted. I’ve done so much travelling lately, and there’s more to come in January as I go on a mini-book tour. The proposed changes to our house were finally approved by Service Départemental de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine and other powers that decide how a village with roots in the Roman and Medieval periods should look, so we now have to start the process of deciding on fixtures and finishes and anxiously going through our finances to see how much work we can actually get done.

Given all of that, we’ve decided not to do a whole lot for Christmas this year. We won’t have a big Christmas dinner or anything, just a low-key celebration at home.

Part of our low-key Christmas will be this simple yet delicious, buttery pound cake. I didn’t have time to make a Christmas pudding weeks in advance (though I made one for my mom to enjoy back in Yokohama, back in mid-November.) It’s really easy to put together, and the brandy or Calvados soaked raisins add just enough holiday cheer. It’s also a cake that tastes better after a day or so, so I can get it done in advance and not worry about dessert.

Pound cake is called quatre-quarts, which means ‘four quarters’, in France, because it has 4 ingredients in 4 equal amounts. It’s popular in Brittany, home of delicious butter and salt. (Did I meantion that we almost decided to settle down in Brittany last year? The butter and salt had a lot to do with that.) This pound cake has quite a lot of added salt, which makes the flavor of the butter really come to life. Note that I used unsalted butter and add salt, rather than using pre-salted butter. This gives me the control over how much salt goes in. I’ve used enough so that you can taste the salt, as you can in all Brittany pastries, but not so much that it’s overwhelming.

Using Calvados to soak the raisins keeps it northern French in feel, but any good brandy will do, or even rum if that’s what you have on hand.

This can be baked in a square (such as an 8 x 8 brownie pan), rectangular or round cake pan. It’s not at all fussy in that respect.

The 4 base ingredients in the cake should be equal in weight. For the best results, I highly recommend using a scale, although I have given cup amounts too. But before you weigh out the ingredients, please read through the instructions.

The amount of raisins is not that critical - you can leave them out if you prefer a plain cake.

150g / 5 1/2 oz (about 1 US cup) raisins

Enough brandy or Calvados to cover the raisins, about a cup

5 ‘large’ eggs, approximately 250g / 8.8 oz (1 1/4 cups)

250g / 8.8 oz unsalted butter (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) or the same amount in weight as the eggs 250g / 8.8 oz granulated sugar (1 cup plus 3 tablespoons) or the same amount in weight as the eggs 250g / 8.8 oz cake flour or all-purpose flour (2 cups) or the same amount in weight as the eggs 2 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. baking powder

extra butter and flour for the pan, unless you’re using a non-stick pan

Equipment needed: An oven, 3 bowls (one for the eggs, one for the flour and dry ingredients, and the largest one for mixing everything), a flour sifter (optional), a wooden spoon, a spatula, a whisk of mixer or food processor.

At least a day before you plan to bake the cake, put the raisins in a glass or ceramic container and cover with brandy or Calvados. Cover and leave to soak for several hours. You can soak more raisins if you wish, and store them in the refrigerator for later use.

To bake the cake: drain off the liquor from the raisins. (Keep the liquor in a jar for flavoring other cakes and such.) If you’re not using a non-stick pan, coat the inside of your pan with butter then lightly flour it, to prevent the cake from sticking.

Break the eggs and weigh them. 5 ‘large’ eggs should come out to about 250 grams, but whatever the weight is, that is how much in weight of the sugar, butter and flour you will need. So, once you’ve weighed the eggs, weigh out the same amount of butter, sugar and flour.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together. (You can skip this step and just mix them together, but sifting does make the cake a bit lighter.)

Soften the butter - putting in the microwave for a minute does the trick.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°c / 350°F around this point.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon or a sturdy whisk until the mixture is white and fluffy.

Beat the eggs up and add them to the sugar-butter mix a little at a time, beating well between additions. (Using a mixer or food processor makes the mixing part go a lot faster.)

Add the flour mix a little at a time, incorporating it with a spatula. If you’re using a mixer or food processor, make sure you don’t over-mix after adding the flour or the cake will get a bit heavy.

Add the raisins and mix them in with the spatula.

Put the batter into the prepared pan, and put into the preheated oven. Bake for about an hour; start testing for doneness at around 50 minutes in, by poking the center with a skewer or chopstick or knife. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. If not leave in for a few more minutes and test again.

Take out of the oven and let cool before taking it out of the pan. This is how my most recent one looked. The top has cracked, but no matter.

The cake tastes great when fresh out of the oven, but is even better the next day. It continues tasting good for a few more days.

You can serve it sliced, or cut into dainty cubes. For an adult dessert, put a slice or cubes on a plate, and spoon over a bit of the liquor you used to soak the raisins. Top with softly whipped cream that’s been flavored with more of the liquor and a bit of sugar.

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