It’s been birthday week at our house, as our third son turned nine on Tuesday. We now have 13, 10, 9 and 6 year olds at our house (and two 37 year olds but never mind that).
Birthday week means mom makes a special treat…usually a cake chosen by the birthday boy. I’ve tried to come up with healthier varieties of cakes and treats so that we’re not just consuming empty calories…even if it is a birthday. You can click through this entire section of Healthy Celebrations if you’re interested in finding other healthier varieties of treats I’ve shared in the past. I mean, Lemon Pound Cake is delicious, but sometimes you just need Chocolate. Or is that just me? Regardless, hopefully you’ll find something fun that will please your sweet tooth in our Healthy Celebrations section…and I plan to continue to add to this category as I continue to experiment. If you recall, White Cake and Angel Food Cake are both on the Heavenly Homemakers Recipe Challenge list!
For some reason, two of the last three birthdays celebrated at our house have included a Lemon Pound Cake. It has been fun to experiement with…although the first time I got a little bit carried away with the lemon juice. We were all pretty puckered up by the end of that cake. Whew! A little lemon goes a long way!
Lemon Pound Cake
1 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1 1/4 cups sugar (I use sucanat and I’m pretty sure honey would work well in this recipe)
1/4 cup 100% lemon juice (from a bottle or from freshly squeezed lemons)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 eggs
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
With beaters, whip butter, sour cream, sucanat, lemon juice and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time beating well with each one, or until you get tired of adding eggs one at a time…then just crack them all in and beat well. (Sometimes I get so lazy about individual egg cracking…) Beat in flour and baking powder until the batter is well mixed.
Pour cake batter into a well buttered cake pan (I use a fluted cake ring pan). Bake in a 325° oven for 50-65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool for at least 10 minutes before removing cake from pan and placing on a cake plate. Allow cake to cool completely before pouring Lemon Glaze over the top…
Lemon Glaze
1/2 cup 100% lemon juice (if that’s too much lemon for ya, just cut the amount of juice down and substitute water)
1 cup powdered sugar (I recommend using unbleached organic powdered sugar or your own homemade powdered sugar from sucanat)
Use a fork (or a spoon or a whisk or whatever is clean at the moment) to mix the two ingredients. Drizzle the glaze over the cake. You can even use a toothpick to poke a few holes in the cake before you start to drizzle so that some of the glaze goes down into the cake!!
So are you a lemon lover? Does lemon make you pucker? Have you ever been one of those parents who have given their baby a lemon wedge, just to see the face they make?
