Earlier this month for Jake’s Mom’s birthday, I made her a cake!
A lemon bundt cake – pound cake kind of thing. I decided to call it “lemon bliss” because it’s blissfully delicious. It’s based on a recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour’s website with a couple of little additions.
This cake doesn’t have frosting on it, but it does have lemon glaze which soaks into the cake for a day or two. It’s a great thing to bring to the beach (which is where we went) since then you don’t have to worry about frosting melting all over the place.
I used my fancy rose bundt cake pan. Originally I was thinking I should have done some kind of rosewater glaze with this, since you know, it’s a ROSE cake. But I didn’t. I stuck with good ole lemon, through and through.
Jake’s niece and sister said it was almost too pretty to eat the cake. But cakes are for eating, no matter how pretty they are!
Everyone seemed to really like the cake – especially Jake! I think he had like three pieces. Considering he’s not a sweets person, this was a great surprise to me.
This cake is super moist and I made it two days in advance. I think it’s one of those “make ahead and let it around around so it gets all crazy delicious” kind of cakes.
Here’s Jake’s mom, Carin, pretending to blow out the candles. It was so freakin’ windy at the beach, we couldn’t get any of the candles to stay lit.
Here’s hoping you find your own piece of bliss.
- 1 cup unsalted butter (softened)
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup half & half
- 1 package lemon pudding mix
- zest of 3 lemons
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1/3 cup lemon juice
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep your bundt pan with cooking spray and a dusting of flour.
- In a bowl, mix together the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour. Set aside.
- Beat together butter and sugar. Beat it until that stuff is FLUFFY - about 4-5 minutes.
- Adds the eggs one at a time. Mix well after each egg, until you can't see any more gooey egg bits.
- Add half of the flour to your batter then mix well. Alternate with the half and half, mix again. Add in the rest of the flour and mix well. Add in the last of the half and half.
- Stir in the dry lemon pudding mix, lemon zest and lemon juice. Mix until smooth.
- Pour your batter into the prepared pan. Tap on the counter top to settle the batter. Bake cake for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the lovely cake comes out clean.
- While the cake is baking, prepare the lemon glaze. Mix together the lemon juice and sugar in a pot and bring to a boil. Boil for about 1 minute. Take off the heat and let cool.
- After your cake is out of the oven and cooled, poke holes with a toothpick all over the cake. Brush the glaze all over the cake. Let it sit and soak up that lemon glaze for a day or two before serving. Of course if you don't have the time or patience to wait that long, by all means, eat it ASAP. I won't tell.
What a beautiful looking cake! I’ll have to try making this, especially with the surplus of lemons in our backyard.
Thanks CC! I usually use lemons from our yard, too. I love fresh lemons!
Lemon pudding mix huh?! I swear that’s the ‘secret’ in most of these recipes nowadays. The cake looks beautiful – i’m always worried the cake will stick inside the pan after it bakes (no matter how much I grease it up). Where did you get your rose pan from?
Pudding in the mix – it totally works! Among other things, of course. 🙂 As long as I grease things up well, then I don’t seem to have a problem with cake coming out of the pan. You can also tell a cake is ready when it starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, too. That also helps with cake release! I actually got the rose bundt pan on Woot.com when they were having one of their sales, so I got it for like half off the normal price. They have some great deals on there!