Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake

So glad to get back to baking after taking a much needed blog vacation.
I missed you all!

I'll be hosting an anniversary giveaway in my next post. Are you wondering what it might be?
I'll give you two hints - Chocolate and Williams-Sonoma.
Stay tuned!
:)

Okay, this week's Heavenly Cake Bakers selection was the Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes - page 41. This cake can be made without the poppy seeds if you like, but I think they add wonderfully to the overall texture and appearance of the cake. The recipe also calls for 5 teaspoons of grated lemon zest, which add happy little yellow specks of flavor throughout.

I'm glad Rose's recipe included the gram weight for the lemon zest. After grating the zest from just 2 lemons, I weighed the zest to see how much more I needed, only to find I already had exactly the right amount (10 g) - visually, it looked like I needed to zest at least 1 more lemon, maybe 2.

The lemon flavor is enhanced by the addition of a lemon syrup that's brushed on while the cake is still hot from the oven. Most of the syrup seeps into the cake, but some of it coats the surface and gives an attractive glazed effect - sticky, but oh so good.
A huge hit with the family.

The recipe calls for the cake to be baked in a 10-cup bundt pan. I don't have a 10-cup aluminum bundt pan, so I used a 10-cup silicone pan. You can see how my cake turned out a little too brown on the outer edges, but not at all on the inner edges. Not happy about that, but it was cooked properly throughout and I liked the finished shape in the end.

This cake was extremely easy to prepare - start to finish was about an hour, and I was half asleep when I mixed the batter. No flubs.

If you love lemon, you'll love this tasty cake.

I served this cake with Lemon curd Ice Cream (an experiment that turned out really well). It's extremely easy to prepare.

To make the cute little heart, place a small spot of fruit sauce in the center of a small puddle of melted lemon curd ice cream - then pull a skewer or a toothpick through from the top to the bottom.
Click here for the lemon curd ice cream recipe.

Thanks for visiting!