Meyer Lemon Pound Cake Recipe

I made this recipe with my ‘lil helper last Sunday and if you’ve ever cooked with a toddler you know how difficult it becomes to pay attention to what you are doing while said toddler is loading up on handfuls of vegetable shortening and granulated sugar.

It is literally like I never feed the child. The minute she eyes that bag of flour she is instantly elbow deep in the stuff, wriggling her little hands around until she’s grasped a gorilla-sized handful to shovel in her mouth.

My solution is to bake as fast as possible so she only has mere moments with each ingredient. Only long enough for her to sprinkle one pinch of salt into her mouth and declare “ummm, I loooovve salt.” Otherwise I start to worry about her blood pressure and my parental capability.

While I’m racing through a recipe I typically forget a thing or two. Take the first round of this cake for example, I failed to notice the lemon zest goes in the batter, not the glaze. The cake turned out fine, but much of the crystallized bits of zest fell off before they made it into my mouth.

So I made another cake—alone—and that one was better, perfumed with lemon the whole cake through. Of course I forgot to take pictures of the zest-filled cake, so when you look at the picture below, just ignore the zest on top and imagine it’s not there.

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Meyer Lemon Pound Cake Recipe

Yield: 8-10 servings

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

I adapted this recipe from Saveur magazine and made it dairy-free. They recommend waiting 24 hours to eat the cake and if you have the will power to do so, it does make a difference. I absolutely did not have the will power and ate the cake within a few hours of baking, it was good, but not nearly as intensely lemony as it was the next day. This recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of lemon extract which I thought sounded insane, but it actually was really good, the almonds help balance the flavor and make it zingy not astringent.

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Ingredients

• 8 tablespoons vegetable shortening, melted
• 1/2 cup whole almonds
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup soy milk, at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• Zest and juice of 2 Meyer lemons

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan and dust with flour, knocking out excess.
2. Grind almonds in a food processor fitted with the blade attachment until very fine, but not paste. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
3. Cream shortening and 1 cup of the sugar in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating just long enough to incorporate. Add flour mixture and milk in 3 batches, beginning and ending with the flour. Beat each addition just until mixed, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula in between each batch. Add lemon extract, lemon zest, and almonds and stir just until mixed.
4. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 65 minutes. Transfer pan to a cooling rack and prepare glaze.
5. For the glaze: Combine remaining sugar and lemon juice in a small saucepan over medium heat, just until sugar is dissolved. (Do not boil). Pour the glaze over the warm cake and let sit until cake absorbs glaze completely.
6. Once cake has absorbed all the glaze, turn it out of the pan and allow to cool on rack. Once it's cool, wrap cake in plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours before serving.

Nutrition Information:

Yield: 10 Serving Size: 1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 349Total Fat: 15gSaturated Fat: 5gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 10gCholesterol: 43mgSodium: 330mgCarbohydrates: 48gFiber: 2gSugar: 31gProtein: 5g

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