Lemon Poundcake

It would be so VERY helpful if the ingredients in baking recipes were noted by weight in grams, as I am sure this one would have been in the original version. My lemon trees gives me fruit some the size of baseballs, small grapefruits, and others much smaller. Plus, the amount of juice any given lemon will yield can vary widely. So "9 lemons" is pretty meaningless. I do get in this case a bit more or less won't matter much, but in many French recipes especially it does. Please?

I wonder why it calls for toasting the syrup- impregnated cake. I have made an easier and simpler lemon pound cake for years, when cake is out of the oven, still in loaf pan but warm, pour juice of 2 lemons over it, cake will absorb this. Then sprinkle top with granulated sugar. It is wonderfully moist and lemony. (The zest of the 2 lemons is added to the batter.)

Really, really lemony. The lemon flavor goes through the whole slice and isn't confined just to the outside of the loaf. Texture is quite nice, too.

However, the recipe for lemon syrup makes about 2 cups! I tried to get the cake to absorb a lot by turning and squeezing--and got it to absorb enough syrup that the cake started to fall apart.

Next time I'm going to make a smaller quantity of syrup (so as not to waste lemons) and bake it in 4 small loaf pans so it's easier to handle.

So having made this cake TWICE in the last 24 hours (yep that's 5 hours!), a tip I found the hard way: you have to be very. very careful when bathing the cake - the moment between not enough syrup and too much and it falls apart is quite sudden (hence the redo today..). Bathing loaf on a wire rack inside of a large roasting dish allows bathing and retrieving without too much handling and lifting. Then move the rack inside oven for the essential last step of crisping it for 15 min.

Really good! But too much syrup - half woul've been fine. Might try it with oranges too.

Take the cake OUT of the syrup before putting it back in the oven!

Because the cake is so moist, almost falling apart, once it has been "bathed", that the heat of the oven helps it "set", it also dries out the outside which is wet, very unlike a traditional pound cake (this recipe has very little to do with an American pound cake BTW, except for the shape). The passage in the oven gives it a crispy exterior as all that syrup crystallizes under high heat.

I make a similar cake that I think is easier. When it comes out of the oven, and while still in the pan, poke deep holes all through it with a cake tester or skewer. Then pour the syrup over the top (aka the bottom). They syrup goes deep into the cake and around the sides.

Let sit for a couple of minutes, then flip it out of the pan over a sheet of waxed paper. Voila! A very moist cake with no squeezing (which sounds like an accident waiting to happen).

This cake came out great, although it is definitely a diet buster! I agree with the other commenters that you can get away with making only a half recipe of the syrup. There's no way the cake will absorb any more than that, and you'll save some money on lemons.

This cake has such a nice delicate texture. The lemon flavor is nice. I made superfine sugar by putting regular sugar in the food processor for 15 seconds. Great recipe!

So, how did the lemon pound cake turn out when you made it in four small loaf pans? In addition, how did you alter the baking times?

Use a 10” by 5” loaf pan‼️‼️

This was unbelievably good with homegrown Meyer lemons. I used the 9 x 5" loaf pan as the recipe directed — the batter came riiiight to the top of the pan, but miraculously didn't spill over and created a nice "muffin top". When lining with parchment, I'd highly recommend leaving a generous amount of paper protruding from the pan. The batter will need it to continue climbing and rising and will help you remove the delicate cake from the pan.

OMG I can never make this again... Delicious, but my Weight Watcher's calculator gives this 20 points per serving! That's almost a day's worth of (non)nutrition... I will use the lemon sponge squeeze on a less buttery poyndcake. Can't believe a sugar-conscious White House would accept this!

This is a recipe from 2001, so Yosse wasn't yet at the White House:)