Glazed Lemon Cake Recipe
Fresh Lemon Makes Tangy Glaze on Simple and Delicious Cake
A simple, sweet and tart lemon cake. Perfect with coffee or tea and easy enough to make with kids.
Lemon cake is as old as the hills. This version makes a simple square cake or loaf. What sets it apart are fresh ingredients. Do not be tempted to use margarine in place of butter or bottled lemon juice. The results will hardly be worth the time, effort or money saved.
Let the sun shine in and buy some fresh, delicious lemons and set your kids to squeezing them. This particular recipe came from a lovely, well-travelled French woman in Ottawa, Canada who says she was handed it by a Cree woman in Beardmore, Northern Ontario years earlier. Many a conversation was had over Helen's lemon cake.
Helen's Lemon Cake
Cake Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- Grated rind of one lemon (reserve lemon for glaze)
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups sifted, all purpose flour
- pinch salt
- 1 tsp. baking power
- 1/2 cup milk
Lemon Glaze Ingredients:
- Juice of one lemon
- 1/4 c. granulated sugar
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Cream the butter with an electric mixer or by hand. Slowly beat in sugar and lemon rind.
- In a separate bowl, beat together eggs and milk. Set aside.
- Sift dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to creamed mixture alternately with beaten eggs and milk mixture.
- Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes in a loaf pan or small, square pan.
Glaze:
- Mix the juice of one lemon with the sugar and spoon over loaf while hot from the oven.
Variations:
- If coconut is your cup of tea, you may add 1/2 cup of coconut to the batter before baking for a rich, nutty texture.
- For another texture variation, you can sprinkle the top of the cake with 1/4 cup of blanched, sliced almonds before coating it with glaze. Very pretty to look at and makes a slightly richer taste.
- You can also serve this with cream cheese icing - and without the fresh lemon glaze. Be sure to flavour your favourite cream cheese icing recipe with plenty of fresh lemon juice... A better idea, make 2 small square cakes, pile them one on top the other and with cream cheese icing in the centre and top the cake with lemon glaze. Oh. La. La!
Helen's Lemon Cake Trivia: Are you a fan of Canadian literature? If so - and if you've read the works of Giller Prize winning author Elizabeth Hay (Late Nights on Air, A Student of Weather) - then it may interest you to know that many a Helen's lemon cake was enjoyed in the south Ottawa home where the author currently lives. Back in the day, the home was owned by a salty old botanist whose spirit undoubtedly rambles through the house still and whose works and habits were more than probably the inspiration for many of the notions in Hay's delicious book, A Student of Weather. Dr. Bill Dore loved Helen's lemon cake, too.
