TWD--Lemon Loaf Cake

Lemon loaf cake, this week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, couldn't have come at a better time for this baker. My friend Susan convinced me that I should try baking my way through Baking with Julia with the Internet TWD group after hearing it featured on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. It just so happens that Susan is coming for dinner Thursday evening, and serving the lemon cake with a dollop of lemon curd would be just the thing for a spring-time dessert. And, it is springlike in Ohio this week.

I started the process by zesting the three lemons. I love my zester, given to me by my baking daughter Katie who is doing TWD from her home in Sugar Land, Texas.

I confess, I didn't read through the instructions carefully, so I did not bring my eggs up to room temperature. What to do? I put them in a container of warm water for about five minutes, while I melted the butter and they were quickly warmed sufficiently to put in my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl. I used the wisk attachment to mix the eggs and the sugar.

 The recipe differed from any cake recipe I had previously made. There was no creaming of the butter and sugar, and the instructions did not indicate that the eggs should be beaten enough to incorporate air. I began to wonder if this cake would rise, particularly since there was so little baking powder in the recipe.

After adding all the ingredients and mixing them as indicated in the recipe, I poured the batter in a 9 by 5 pan, as instructed. However, there seemed to be too little batter for a loaf pan of this size. I wondered if an 8 by 4 pan might have been more appropriate.

I set my timer for 50 minutes, the minimum required for the recipe, but found that it didn't pass the toothpick test after that amount of time. I added another 5 minutes, and then the toothpick came out clean.

 The cake came out of the pan very nicely, after waiting the requisite 10 minutes. However, I would have liked it to look taller and think if I'd used a smaller pan it would have. I can't report on the taste yet, since I froze the cake, waiting for Susan's arrival on Thursday.