Lemon Bundt Cake

O dear, I am afraid I have been neglecting my little blog terribly.  I got caught up in, well, life I suppose.  I hatched chickens and went on treasure hunts at thrift stores with my sister and got an iPhone and then got addicted to said iPhone and dyed my hair and went to fourteen wineries and went back to Portland and saw  my wonderful friends there and developed an obsession with elephants and did not quite become a bocce ball champion (I have terrible aim and have a hard time telling how hard to throw the ball) and all sorts of other things.  So, I am going to jump back in with a lemon bundt cake, combining my love of lemons and love of bundts.  I love the density of most bundts and the balance of sweet and sour with the lemon.  I am also incredibly picky about the combination of frosting/cake combo, they have to work together in just the right way, and because I never really frost bundts, they let me do away with that dilemma all together.  This recipe comes from the blog Baking and Books (click the link for the recipe).

Start by greasing and flouring your bundt pan, I am paranoid about my bundts sticking so I am a bit obsessive about this step.  I also got a nice heavy one and cool the cakes in it for 10 minutes before flipping them out.  Then cream the butter and sugar.  Next add the eggs one at a time.

In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients, which you may or may not want to sift, depending on how lazy you are feeling at that particular moment.  Then add 1/3 of the flour to the butter and egg and sugar mixture, mix gently also known as folding, add half of the buttermilk (or if you are like me, the milk that has a splash of lemon juice in it or the powdered buttermilk route, where you want to put the powder in with the dry stuff and then just water for this step which looks a bit gross but works really well), mix, add 1/2 of the remaining flour, mix, then the rest of the buttermilk, mix, then the rest of the flour.  (I don't know why I felt the need to spell out the alternating in that step for you....)

Next zest and juice your lemons into the batter and fold them in.  I would highly recommend using one of these juicers, they work really well.

Dump the batter into the carefully prepared pan and bake for about an hour.  Once the cake is done, let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes before flipping it out.

If you want, you can make a simple glaze with powdered sugar and lemon juice, I always end up estimating the measurements for glazes and then tweaking them to get them to the consistency I want.  Slice generously and serve.

Lemon Sugar Cookies

We have our traditional sugar cookies that we make every year for christmas, these aren't those cookies.  Those are cut out cookies, made using the same cookie cutters and frosted with buttercream and topped with sprinkles.  These are chewy, lemony and almost completely unadorned (I say almost because I couldn't help myself, I added some red sprinkles to the sugar I rolled them in to make them look a little festive).  O my are they tasty.  I am discovering that I am quite fond of lemon, I have absolutely no idea why it has taken this realization so long to dawn on me, but there you have it, lemony baked goods are my new loves.  I even remember the first time I admitted my love of lemon, my sister and I were trying to decide on which mini cupcakes to sample from this place and I selected the meyer lemony lemon and then I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking about how I could possibly recreate it.  The sweet and tart and bright deliciousness of baked goods that feature lemon can't be denied, and if you don't believe me, try these cookies.  I found the recipe here and didn't tweak it at all, except for the red sprinkles.

Start by mashing the lemon zest and sugar together.  It didn't turn a lovely pale yellow like the recipe said, but I'm sure something happened and mushing things about is generally not a bad time.

Then mix the dry stuff together.

Next, cream the butter and sugar, mix in the egg, then the flour, pretty standard cookie making stuff.  Also, please ignore how terrible the picture of the dough is, I don't know how it ended up so blurry but I made it smaller in hopes that it would be less noticeable, but I don't think that helped much.

Then you just scoop out about a tablespoon of dough at a time, roll it into a ball and roll it in the sugar.  Bake until the edges turn a bit golden, they are super soft and chewy when you take them out but get a bit crisper as they cool.