Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake

Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake - made May 25, 2015 from Goodies by Anna

It’s out of season for lemons but try telling that to my lemon tree. It doesn’t listen to me either when I also tell it it’s supposed to be a dwarf lemon tree. When the tallest branches hit 9 feet, I prune it to take it down a notch. But I generally leave the blossoms and lemons alone. If it wants to produce when I don’t expect it to, nothing to be done about it but snip the lemons when they’re nice and yellow.

A couple of weeks ago, it actually yielded a couple of really big lemons. Actually there were three but one fell before I could get to it so I didn’t want to take any more chances and harvested the other two. I had some sour cream to use up and having lemons and sour cream just cried out for a pound cake. Pinterest to the rescue and I found this luscious looking lemon sour cream bundt cake. Honestly, it was the beautiful glaze work that sucked me into making the cake. Click on the blog title to take you to the original recipe and you'll see what I mean.

So it was unfortunate that my glaze work was a far, far, far cry from the original. Sigh. I actually wonder if the picture matched the recipe because the recipe calls for including lemon zest in the glaze but in the picture, I don’t see any zest. Zest provides wonderful flavor but it does prevent having a smooth glaze like the picture. So maybe my glazed cake isn’t as pretty as the original blog's picture but it is a more faithful rendition of the recipe, lol.

Overall, this was a good lemon pound cake. I ran short on lemons so I didn’t have enough to make the lemon simple syrup but I think I got good lemon flavor from the zest, juice and extract in the batter and from the zest and juice in the glaze. This is a nice summer picnic cake if any of those are coming up on the horizon. The only caution is I found this difficult to get out of the bundt pan intact (as I’m sure you can tell). The outside was a bit crusty which is a sign that beating the batter after the eggs were added contributed to a meringue-like crust which crumbled and clung to the pan. So you might want to make sure you generously grease your Bundt pan and use a nonstick pan.

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3 cups granulated sugar
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract
grated zest of 2 lemons
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

Lemon Simple Syrup
1 cup fresh lemon juice
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
zest of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

Lemon Glaze
lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
powdered sugar

1. Spray a 12-cup Bundt pay with nonstick cooking spray; set aside. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.
4. Beat in the extracts and zest.
5. On low speed, alternately add the flour and sour cream in 3 additions. Beat in the lemon juice until batter is smooth. Spread batter evenly in the pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
6. Lemon simple syrup: while cake is baking, combine lemon juice, sugar, water, zest and lemon extract in a small saucepan set over medium high heat. Bring mixture to a boil and cook until reduced down to approximately 1/2 cup of syrup, around 15 minutes. Let syrup cool before brushing onto warm cake.
7. Poke holes into cake while still warm from the oven. Brush liberally with lemon simple syrup. Let cake cool for 15 minutes then invert cake onto cooling rack. Poke holes into top of cake and brush liberally with more simple syrup. Let cake cool completely on wire rack.
8. Lemon Glaze: While cake is cooling on a rack, in a small bowl, add lemon juice a tablespoon at a time to 1 cup of powdered sugar until a thick glaze comes together. Add lemon extract. Drizzle glaze over cooled cake. Let glaze set up for 10 minutes before cutting and serving. Store in airtight container.