Ingredients
- 19 oz granulated sugar
- 12 oz unsalted butter at cool room temperature
- 1 gently rounded teaspoon fine sea salt
- Zest of 2 lemons, (use a Microplane for best results)
- 1/4 teaspoon lemon extract or 3 drops of lemon oil
- 5 large eggs, , beaten
- 13 oz cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 6 oz thick Greek yogurt, (without gums or other additives) or sour cream
- 2 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice, , strained
- 2 oz whole milk
Instructions
- Set your oven rack to one below the center and preheat the oven to 350F.
- Spray a 12-cup Bundt-type pan thoroughly with pan spray, then flour your pan very well. Knock out the excess flour. If you only have a 10-cup Bundt-type pan, you’ll have about 1 1/2 cups of batter left over. You can use this to make a 6″ cake or maybe 4-5 cupcakes. Go ahead and prepare those pans if necessary. *Set aside.
- Cream together butter, sugar, salt, zest and extract/oil until very light and fluffy. Take your time here; it could take 10 minutes or more. You want your creamed mixture to be very pale in color (this lets you know that you’ve incorporated a lot of air into the mix) and very thick and fluffy. Scrape down your mixing bowl as necessary.
- While the butter mixture is creaming, whisk together your flour, baking powder and baking soda. If after whisking, the flour seems a bit lumpy, go ahead and sift the dry ingredients. Set aside.
- Whisk together the yogurt/sour cream, lemon juice and whole milk. Set aside.
- Once the butter/sugar mixture is beautifully light, drizzle in the beaten eggs, a bit at a time, over a period of about 5 minutes. Scrape the bowl as necessary.
- Alternately add the dry and wet ingredients, beginning and ending with dry, in this manner:
- Add half the dry
- Add half the wet
- Add half of the remaining dry ingredients
- Add the rest of the wet ingredients
- Add the rest of the dry ingredients.
- Mix on low for only about 5 seconds between additions. Scrape the bowl as necessary, making sure to get down to the bottom, but don’t worry too much about completely mixing.
- Once all your ingredients are combined, scrape the bowl and fold by hand for a few seconds.
- Put the bowl back on the mixer and mix on high speed for no more than three seconds.
- Scrape the batter into your prepared pan(s).
- Bake for about an hour until the cake is well risen, deeply golden brown and has a crack running around the center of the top of the cake (pound cakes do this. It’s okay). A thin knife or a skewer inserted into Said Crack should come out clean.
- Let the cake cool in the pan for 20 minutes (10 minutes if you’ve made a small extra cake) then turn the cake out.
- Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate until cool. I promise this will not give you a soggy cake, just a very moist and wonderful cake.
Optional
- When just barely warm, you can glaze the cake with a mixture of powdered sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, just a pinch of salt.
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