I made a wedding cake

Two-tiered lemon
cake with blackberries and limoncello buttercream.

Lemon pound cake

It's been a really long time since my last post! There are lots of things that have been going on in the kitchen since my Halloween candy post, but I've been keeping them all to myself. Well, how about a recipe for lemon pound cake with some very lemony glaze? I have to tell you, it's not exactly quick to make. It requires some slightly annoying prep (pan-flouring, flour-sifting, lemon-zesting), and takes a lot of time in the oven. But even though that stuff might seem a little fussy, the difficulty-to-impressiveness ratio still comes out in your favor. It's zippy from all the citrus, and the glaze gives the outside of the cake a crunchy coat. Kind of like those really sour English lemon drops in cake form. I'm starting to think every cake should have a glaze. Here's the (very step-by-step) recipe, because I want you and the people you love to eat this cake.

(PS I think that paragraph can be summed up as, "cake cake cake cake cakety-cake cake cake! And glaze.")

Ingredients:
2 lemons
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
2 sticks margarine
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup soy yogurt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup non-dairy milk
2/3 cup more sugar (for the glaze)


1. Dry Ingredients
First, you'll need 3 cups of sifted all-purpose flour. If you've never done that before, it's easy, and there's a first time for everything. Here's all you do: Sift about 4 cups of all purpose flour into a large, dry mixing bowl. Now measure 3 cups of that sifted flour into a different mixing bowl. Sift in 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 3/4 tsp. salt. (The leftover flour that you sifted can get added right back into your flour canister.)

At this point, you'll also want to grate the peel of two lemons. Make sure you wash your lemons first! I use the finest side of a four-sided grater, and to grate onto a flexible cutting board, since grating into a bowl can be kind of wobbly. You want to get as much of the yellow outside zest as possible, but try to not get too much of the bitter white pith that's just under the skin.

2. Baking Pan
Grease (I use cooking spray) an 11-cup tube/bundt pan. If you don't have one of those, or if you like your pound cake loaf-y, grease 2 8" loaf pans. Dust the oiled pans with vegan breadcrumbs (NOT the seasoned kind!!! Blech. And check the ingredients for milk products.) If the only vegan bread crumbs you can get your hands on are panko, you'll want to crush/grind them up first. You can do that with a blender, food processor, mortar & pestle, or ziploc bag & rolling pin. Tap any excess crumbs into the trash, you only want a very fine coating.

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

3. The Fun Part: Cake Batter
Use an electric mixer or fork to cream 2 sticks (that's 1 cup/ 1/2 lb.) vegan margarine. If you use something salty like Earth Balance, you should omit the salt from the dry ingredients.
Once the margarine is soft, add in 2 cups of sugar, and beat until well incorporated. Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl so that everything gets mixed evenly. It should look pale yellow, fluffy, and smooth. Beat in the 1/2 cup soy yogurt, vanilla, and lemon zest.

Now turn your beater down to low, and add in about half of the flour mixture. Once that's almost all mixed in, add 1/2 of the milk and stir until incorporated. Now add the other half of the flour, and finish with the rest of the milk. Mix just until everything's smoothly incorporated, because overmixing will make your cake tough.

Pour the batter into your prepared cake pan(s) and bake for about an hour and ten minutes for a bundt, or 40 minutes for a loaf. Check your cake by poking it with a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean, its ready to come out of the oven! If not, give it another five minutes and test again.

Remove your cake from the oven and let it sit for five minutes in the cake pan while you prepare the glaze:
Juice the lemons and strain out the seeds. How much juice do you have? You only need 1/3-1/2 cup of the juice for this glaze, so put the rest in your seltzer or in some salad dressing or something. Add 2/3 cup of sugar and stir until the sugar is mostly dissolved. (It doesn't have to be perfect.)

Now invert your cake onto a wire cooling rack and brush or spoon glaze all over the warm cake. It will be messy, so put some foil under the cooling rack to catch the drips.

Let that sit for a few hours until cool, and serve to your friends and family, who will adore you forever. My sisters describe it as "nom nom nom," if that gives you an idea

Here, kitty kitty

Meow meow meow
meow meow
meow!

Coffee coffee coffee cake

(AKA Spring break coffee cake)

The dough is adapted from Kris Holechek's Braided Holiday Bread from the amazing book 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes. (Buy her book! It's freakin' awesome! And since I don't like to go around telling you recipes that are the intellectual property of somebody else, I shall not print that recipe here. That would be mean!)
If you don't have her lovely book, you could also use a regular enriched-white-bread type recipe, or your mom's favorite cookbook's yeasty coffee cake recipe, and here's how to veganize it: Substitute 1 tbsp flax meal + 2 tbsp warm water for each egg, and use margarine + soy/almond/rice milk instead of milk + butter. (I love substitutions! Hoorah.)

The filling is yum yum yum, and here's how you make it:
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp oil
3 tbsp brewed coffee
3/4 cup pitted prunes (I know right? But I was out of raisins and we had these and I tasted one and it didn't kill me and it was actually pretty tasty, and trying new things is good!)
1/4 cup chopped almonds
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/4 tsp ground cloves
a little flour for dusting

Coat the prunes with a little flour to make them easier to chop. That was my mom's idea, and boy is she smart! Chop up the prunes. Combine all the ingredients and let them sit while the dough is rising so that all the flavors can really meld and the prunes (BTW, you could also use currants or raisins or even dates) get nice and juicy.

Once your dough is finished rising, roll it out on a floured surface into a rectangle about 14x20 inches or something like that.

Spread the filling on the dough, leaving plenty of room around the edges without filling. Then roll the whole thing up lengthwise (like a jelly roll or a magic carpet) and seal it together with water and lots of patient pinching. Gently pull the edges around into a ring shape--if this is difficult, let the whole thing rest for a minute and try again. Pinch the edges together, using water again to seal it. If it's really thin on one end and fat on the other, you can gently scootch it around until the shape is more even.
Flip it into a 10" round baking pan (a springform pan is probably easiest) with the sealed side down. Let it rise for about 20-25 minutes, covered, in the baking pan.
When it's ready to go in the oven, cut some nice little slits in the top of the ring, and bake it at 375 for 15 minutes, and then about an hour more, until the it sounds hollow when you tap it.

You can ice it with a mixture of powdered sugar and soy/almond/rice/etc. milk, if you want. (I want! I want!)

Let it cool and serve it with coffee, duh.