my adventures in baking: Golden Lemon Almond Cake

I originally made this fabulous Golden Lemon Almond Cake last year and it was so delicious that I've made it about four times since then. The recipe comes from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes and was part of my Heavenly Cake Baker baking ring from 2011. I highly recommend this cookbook. While I joined the HCBers late so didn't make every recipe in the book, the cakes that I did make all turned out beautifully. Plus, the book itself is gorgeous - lots of color photographs, clear directions and helpful hints.

I made the Golden Lemon Almond Cake again for a party we had on July 4th and, once again, it was fantastic.

This cake is so simple to make because you don't have to do the standard alternating dry and wet ingredients. You just mix the dry ingredients together then add the butter and most of the sour cream and mix that together. Finally, you add the remaining wet ingredients and that's it! After the cake is baked you brush on a sweet and tart lemon syrup - so delicious! The cake has a wonderful body - substantial but not heavy or dense and the ground nuts give the cake both its amazing flavor and also keep it really moist.

I made a delicious raspberry sauce (also from the Heavenly Cakes cookbook) to serve with the cake. It would be equally yummy served with a lemon whipped cream or just plain.

mise en place

use a heavy-duty pan with funky edges and your cake will have
gorgeous lines and a golden brown crust

blanched, sliced almonds are toasted to a golden brown and then ground

after the nuts are mostly ground, the lemon zest and part of the sugar are added
and pulsed some more

I could just eat this mixture on its own

the flour mixture, the remaining sugar and nut zest mixture are added
to the bowl of a stand mixture and mixed to combine

the butter and most of the sour cream are added to the dry ingredients and are beaten

the wet ingredients are combined and then added to the dry

more than doubled in volume...it's a gorgeous batter!

in the close up you can see the little bits of ground almonds

ready to be baked

making the syrup...so delicious

done and cooled

so gorgeous and the smell - the lemons and almonds - is amazing

the lemon-sugar syrup gets brushed on what will be the bottom

the turbinado sugar in the syrup give the cake a
sparkly appearance and a sweet crunch

can't wait for the party so I can try a slice

Here is the raspberry sauce I made to serve with the cake. The first time I made this sauce it was also for an HCB cake, Moist Chocolate Raspberry Génoise. This sauce is so incredibly delicious. Sweet, a little tart from the lemon juice and very, very raspberry-ish (is that a word?). I could, literally, just drink it. In fact, it would be delicious in a martini or other cocktail or even just added to some plain soda water. Oh, I am getting so many ideas on how to eat this sauce!