- Hey, I'm John Kanell and today on "Preppy Kitchen",
we're making a delicious "Lemon Pound Cake".
So, let's get started.
First off, set your oven to 350 Fahrenheit,
we want this nice and toasty
and this recipe comes together in a snap.
We're also prepping our nine by five inch loaf pan,
I'm using some parchment paper,
you could just butter and flour it.
We're gonna plop that right in there.
Now, just like magic,
you have a wonderful cozy place for your cake, to pop out.
Grab a medium bowl.
I'm using a scale, because it gives me the best results.
I'm adding two and a half cups,
or 300 grams of all-purpose flour.
So, originally pound cakes were four pounds
and they were one pound of butter,
one pound of sugar,
one pound of flour,
one pound of eggs,
it's very easy to remember and I have to tell you
I actually baked up a traditional pound cake,
just as an exercise, was not the best cake I've ever had,
but it was tasty, I'd eat it.
This is indeed better, we play with the proportions
and it has that amazing lemon flavor, throughout.
One teaspoon of salt and you might think,
"Oh my gosh, that's a lot of salt",
it actually will give you a nice balance
and I wanna show you, this is kosher salt.
They're fairly large pieces,
that just means you're getting less salt in your recipe
and if you wanna see like what the ultimate mega salt is,
it's flaked sea salt, which is like this.
We use this to finish recipes,
like you could pop that on top of cookies
and you have giant paper thin flakes of salt
that are crunchy and amazing.
Just by the way, all this is to say,
if you're using fine grained salt,
which is like very powdery and small,
I would actually go with half a teaspoon,
or three quarters max, because you're fitting a lot of salt
into that measuring spoon.
(electronic beeping)
To leaven this up and make it nice and fluffy,
we're adding one and a half teaspoons of baking powder.
(upbeat music)
In you go, my scale is done.
Give us a whisk.
This is an easy peasy lemon squeezy recipe.
Set that aside.
Now, it is time to get to mixing, you can use a stand mixer,
or an electric hand mixer for this.
I'm popping a paddle attachment on this guy
and now we gotta get the butter
and I hope you have some nice fresh lemons ready for this.
Oh, my gosh.
One cup of butter, 226 grams
and it is not just any butter,
it is softened, room temperature butter,
so I wanna show you when you open it up,
you should be able to press it and it will yield.
And I have to push a little bit, but not too much.
You want your butter to be able to whip up
without falling apart,
or just having little chunks of butter.
If you ever had a cake that was like kind of pocket marked,
or had like little craters throughout,
that's happening in part,
because you had butter that was too cold.
You had little chunks all the way through,
which are delicious, we all love chunks of butter,
but when you bake your cake, what happens?
It dissolves, it leaves a void, we don't wanna do that.
We want to have the butter mixed evenly
with everything else, which means, no little chunks.
(electric mixer whirring) Let this mix
on medium high for about three minutes,
you'll see it's nice and fluffy
and it even changes color,
because of all the air you've whipped up into it.
I'm gonna scrape this bowl down, at least one time.
The butter tends to move up in your bowl
if you're using a stand mixer
and it gets packed in the side, as opposed to fluffed up,
so scraping it down is always a nice thing to do.
If you're using a hand mixer,
you don't really have to worry about that,
'cause you're raking the sides as you move along.
While this finishes mixing, I'm gonna measure out
one and a quarter cups, or 250 grams of granulated sugar.
Just about three minutes later,
I wanna show you the difference in the butter.
So, where we're at now, it's looking nice and creamy
and you can actually see a difference in the color,
it's lightened up, it's significantly fluffier.
Now, on medium speed, once again,
I'm gonna slowly add my sugar in
and I wanna beat this for about two minutes
until it is nice and fluffy.
Your pound cake will have a lighter, more delicate crumb
if you beat some air into it with the butter and sugar,
so that's why we're doing this extra step
of going a little bit slower, instead of just dumping it in.
I never understood until I moved to the east coast
and experienced the seasons,
how weather can affect your baking,
'cause I grew up in California, in Los Angeles.
It's a little cold today, it's actually freezing,
so even though my butter was like a nice temperature,
the countertop is sucking heat out of everything.
So, you might have to scrape your bowl down,
be a little bit extra mixey with your butter,
just to get it all fluffed up.
(electric mixer whirring)
A few minutes of mixing later, this looks great.
It's light, it's fluffy,
it has that wonderful, like, "Hmm", consistency.
So now, where is the lemon flavor?
It's coming from two places,
the lemon zest and the lemon juice.
A rasp is my favorite tool in the kitchen at the moment
and it's so multipurpose.
It can take just the edge of citrus skin off,
like lemons, oranges, whatever
and that's where all of the flavor and oils are.
The pith is a little bitter, no flavor, we don't want it.
So, just the edge and we're taking this off.
(electronic beeping)
Beautiful lemon zest, we're just gonna pop that in.
If you're making this at home and you don't have a zester,
you don't have a rasp, you go ahead and use a sharp knife
and pair the skin off carefully,
mince it up and you're good to go.
And if you don't wanna have any of those chunks,
'cause it's really hard to get a fine consistency,
you could actually pop that into your blender,
or a food processor with the sugar to make lemon sugar.
I love doing that in recipes.
The recipe calls for about a tablespoon of lemon zest,
in my mind that is one whole lemon
and if you wanna go crazy, add some more zest in there.
It's not gonna do it any harm,
it'll just make it even more lemony and delicious.
I'm actually gonna start mixing this in right now
on medium speed, just to give it some abrasion
to really force those oils out.
In the meantime, I'm going to cut my naked lemon
and juice it up.
So many seeds, I don't want those seeds.
So, strain this out.
We want about three tablespoons of lemon juice
and depending on your lemon,
that could be the juice of one lemon,
the juice of half a lemon, or the juice of two lemons,
it really depends on if it's nice and juicy, or dry.
Adding lemon to your cake
doesn't just make it delicious with that wonderful zing,
the acid in it is doing two special things.
One, in many cakes, we add a little bit of acid,
like lemon juice, or vinegar, like in red velvet cake,
to give it a little bit of a lift.
They help react with things like baking soda
and give you more bubbling, more reactions,
lighter, fluffier cake.
But in this cake, what's happening is,
the hydrogen plus ions in acids like lemon juice,
sour cream, buttermilk, whatever,
inhibit the folding of proteins.
So, this will stop the gluten from forming
and making your cake like dense and stretchy
and they'll stop the egg proteins from coagulating, too.
Just don't add too much or bad things happen.
(electronic beeping)
I'm adding in three tablespoons of my juice
and this is a nice, really lemony lemon.
My sister-in-law jokes that my brother and I
are addicted to lemon, because we put lemon in everything.
I blame it on the Greek side.
In you go.
I have a little bit left over for my icing,
so don't toss that.
I need four eggs and I'm not feeling that brave today,
because I've had eggs just crumble in my hands
with like powdery shells.
I wanna crack these into a bowl, one at a time
and make sure we do not have any stray shells,
those are horribly undelicious.
(electronic beeping)
Add those eggs in one at a time
and cracking the egg into another bowl,
is a great way to pace yourself,
'cause it gives that first egg time to incorporate.
Two.
Three.
Last egg in and I see some problems here,
I wanna show you what's going on.
On top, I have soupy egg business, but on the bottom
I have a lot of compacted sugar and butter.
See that?
Scrape the bowl down and then we're gonna mix this up
until it's really nice and combined,
I don't want clumps of butter anywhere, you know why.
(electronic beeping)
That looks much better.
I do see suspended tiny bits of butter, but that's okay.
We're gonna say, "Hello" to our flour mixture one last time.
I'm also grabbing half a cup, or a 120 mils of whole milk,
you could use like your favorite milk alternative in that,
if you want, it's totally fine.
Now, with our mixer on low,
we're gonna add the flour in
and plop in maybe a couple batches,
alternating with my milk.
So, maybe add half of the milk right now,
another third of the flour,
the rest of the milk
and the remaining flour.
You don't wanna overmix your batter,
you know at home that it'll make your dough gummy and dense
and just not delicious.
Now, I didn't mix this up until it's combined.
This has a lot of flour, but I'm done using my mixer.
We're gonna finish it off by hand,
because I want this to have
the most delicate, amazing crumb
and when you overmix your batter,
you're gonna activate the gluten in the flour
and it'll be more bready, stretchy, gummy, dense
and I don't want my cake to be gummy and dense.
That's good, the flour's all gone.
Pour your cake batter into your prepared loaf pan.
Our lemon pound cake is ready to go into the oven,
350 for about 65 to 70 minutes,
or until a toothpick inserted in the center,
comes out clean.
While our cake is cooling,
we can make a really easy, delicious lemon glaze.
And I wanna explain something I get asked about a lot.
Namely, what is the difference between a lemon pound cake
and a lemon drizzle cake, if any?
They're very similar and my UK friends can back me up,
or correct me, but a lemon pound cake
will be drizzled with icing after it's cooled
and the icing will sit on top.
That's one cup of powdered sugar by the way
and I'm adding in a healthy tablespoon of fresh lemon juice,
there you go.
Drizzle that in, it's so much flavor.
A lemon drizzle cake has the glaze poured on while it's hot
and it kinda like soaks into the cake more
and you have like a thin film of glaze all over,
slightly different, both delicious.
You can let me know what you prefer in the comments.
Two teaspoons of milk.
Yeah, if you wanted to,
you could use all lemon juice, by the way.
And as an optional little addition,
I'm adding some fresh lemon zest.
Mix that up.
Any glaze you start,
looks a little disappointing to begin with,
see, it's just powdered sugar with some liquid,
but it will come together, just give it time.
Just a little bit of mixing
and that powdered sugar will absorb the lemon juice
and milk it needed to
and if that doesn't happen,
you can add a drop or two more liquid.
(electronic beeping)
And now, you can see,
it's a nice drizzling consistency, just like that.
If you're making this ahead of time,
go ahead and just cover this up with paper, or plastic film,
so it doesn't develop a skin and harden,
it will set up pretty quickly and make drizzling less fun.
We're ready to drizzle this
with our amazing lemon drizzle frosting.
Drizzle all over, I want complete coverage.
Give it a slice and it's ready to enjoy.
So tender, moist and just melt in your mouth, amazing,
with a lovely lemon flavor, throughout.
I hope you get a chance to make this recipe
and if you like my videos,
check out my "Love Cake" playlist.