Sunday, December 14, 2008

Lemon Pudding Cake


Today was Jeff's twenty-somethingth birthday. To celebrate, he wanted a moist, lemony cake. So together we searched on allrecipes.com and found a lemon pudding cake that really seemed to fit the bill. I made this cake this evening, and it was so delicious! Between Jeff and I and the two little ones, we ate the entire cake in less than ten minutes!

Lemon Pudding Cake
3/4 cup sugar
Pinch salt
3 tbsp. butter, melted
1/4 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1 tsp. lemon zest (Jeff hates zest, I substituted lemon extract)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cups milk
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8 inch square pan.

In a large bowl, combine sugar, salt and melted butter. Beat in the flour. Stir in the lemon zest(or extract) and lemon juice. Combine milk and egg yolks, and add to lemon mixture.

In a large glass or metal mixing bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the whites into the batter, then quickly fold in remaining whites until no streaks remain. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Set cake pan in a water bath (Place in larger pan, fill larger pan with an inch of hot water). Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until top is lightly browned. Serve warm or cold.


We ate the cake straight out of the oven. What a great cake! Not exactly a photogenic dessert, but what it lacks in looks it more than makes up for in flavor and texture. While baking, it separates into two distinct layers - a top layer of light, spongy cake, and a creamy, pudding-like bottom layer. The flavor was lemony, but not overwhelmingly so. This cake was a great change of pace.

Jeff made me stay up until midnight last night so he could open his present as soon as it was technically his birthday. He had been trying to guess what I was giving him, but never figured it out. The wait was driving him crazy. So as soon as the clock hit midnight, I let him tear into his present, and this is what he found:


Jeff loves all things spicy, so I got him one of those hot sauce gift sets. Five deliciously spicy hot sauces, featuring five different peppers. He absolutely loves his gift, and says it's one of the best presents he's ever gotten. I like spicy also, so I think I've been enjoying it as much as him!

6 comments:

Meg said...

That cake looks delicious! I bet it was so yummy right out of the oven!

Jacqueline Meldrum said...

I like the fact that the cake makes it's own sauce.

Shelby said...

I love pudding cakes like this one. Happy belated birthday Jeff!

Anonymous said...

Oh! how funny -- I made this only the other day, for the first time in ages. It's one of my all-time favourite desserts, ever since childhood. My mother called it "lemon surprise" because you don't know the sauce is there until you cut into it. My low-fat version is here.

Tina Butler said...

That looks so refreshing Stephanie. I love allrecipes.com you can find some great things. It turned out so pretty.

cathy said...

Yum! I'll be trying this for sure!