I guess I was due. I mean, it has to happen occasionally, right? It all started Saturday afternoon when I was hanging out with some friends. Angie and I started talking madeleines (because of my post last week) and she handed me a beautiful Donna Hay cookbook to take a peek at her madeleine recipe. I've always loved flipping through Donna's magazine in Barnes and Noble and I was quickly drawn into this book of hers as well. The Simple Lemon Cake recipe leaped out at me and I copied it down to try at home.
Tonight I felt like baking and so I flipped open the moleskine notebook into which I had written the recipe and started to pull ingredients together for the cake. I added some chopped rosemary to the lemon zest, thinking that it would add a nice depth of flavor, but that was the only addition I made. It smelled wonderful as it baked, and when I tested it with a skewer after the prescribed 35 minutes, it came out clean. After letting it cool for a while I cut into it and discovered that something was...off. It was as if the center just hadn't baked. I put it back into the oven for a while, but soon discovered that no amount of time and heat was going to fix this sucker.
I once had something similar happen to a loaf of banana bread into which I put too much apple sauce, but I was a little agog that it had happened while I used a seemingly tried and true recipe with which I hadn't messed around (unless somehow I wrote the recipe down incorrectly). It has a good flavor but resembles something closer to a pudding than a cake. I always hate it when good ingredients don't reach their full potential. The recipe is after the jump, in case anyone wants to try it on their own, or just take a peek and tell me where I may have gone wrong.Donna Hay's Simple Lemon Cake
7 1/2 ounces butter, melted
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 Tablespoons lemon zest
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, lemon juice and zest in the bowl of a mixer and mix to combine.
Sift flour and baking powder together and add to the rest of the ingredients.
Bake in a greased 8 x 12 pan for 35 minutes or until golden.
Cheese Course: Brebis Pardou
A transcendent summer tomato salad
Sliced bread turns 80 today
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-27-2007 @ 1:48PM
Steven said...
Perhaps if you had bought the book instead of stealing the recipe from it at the bookstore then it would have came out right. Karma.
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8-27-2007 @ 1:51PM
Steven said...
oops my bad.. I thought you had copied it from the store.. it's Monday morning, give me a break!!
sorry Marisa .. karma bit me now :)
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8-27-2007 @ 2:17PM
Courtney said...
Maybe the recipe called for baking soda but you mistakenly didn't write it down?
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8-27-2007 @ 2:28PM
Adriane said...
Perhaps the recipe is online and you could compare?Weeks back I made a batch of guinness brownies for the first time that did the same thing!
I tried to cook them longer and ended up with overcooked outer edges and an undercooked center- Ick! Assuming I had made a mistake...and really wanting some chocolatey-stout goodness to bring to a party, I tried again...SAME thing happened! I ended up taking them out at the prescribed time and cutting around the center. If I had the patience, I guess I'd try changing things up from the recipe, starting with pan depth.
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8-27-2007 @ 2:49PM
Marisa McClellan said...
Steven, it's not a problem. I declare both our cake karmas to be cleared!
Courtney, I wondered the same thing. I think I'm going to swing by a bookstore tonight and see if they don't have the book so I can double check the recipe.
Adriane, I've heard about these guinness brownies, they sound amazing. How sad that they didn't turn out! A waste of good chocolate and good beer is a sad thing indeed.
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8-27-2007 @ 3:09PM
Christina said...
It sounds like either you didn't have enough leavener, or you had too much liquid.
I had this problem when I was using someone else's recipe for a down-home chocolate cake that was supposedly foolproof. I admit it looked odd (with only 1/2 cup flour to a total of 1 1/2 cups liquid) and I had initial misgivings about it, but I had also seen my friend bake it perfectly, and tasted it, so I thought surely I was mistaken, and I didn't know my baking chemistry.
The cake rose and looked gorgeous in the oven. I inserted a toothpick, and it came out clean. However, after the cake cooled, it sunk and collapsed, and looked like a hard baked pudding.
I ended up tweaking the recipe to a ridiculous point, making it unrecognizable, but delicious. My suggestions are to first make sure your baking soda works (http://www.slashfood.com/2006/10/16/test-your-baking-power-and-baking-soda/)
and if so, try adding 2 teaspoons baking powder. If the recipe works, but you can taste the baking powder (the flavor being a little off and the cake feeling effervescent on your tongue) reduce the baking soda to 1 1/2 or 1 teaspoon. For the volume you're using, 2 teaspoons should work, but I haven't worked with dairy or sugar in a long time, and I know they differently.
www.vegan-vanguard.blogspot.com
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8-28-2007 @ 10:37PM
Angie said...
Hey Marisa,
I just checked the recipe...and you've got it right!
Hmm...not sure of what could have happened there...I swear, the rest of the recipes I've tried from this book have been winners! :-)
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8-29-2007 @ 12:27PM
tom beckman said...
First of all, the method is lame. Why would you take perfectly good butter and melt it? Are we making muffins? No! The best way to make this kind of cake is to "cream" the butter with the sugar, add the eggs one a t a time. Sift the dry ingredients together. Mix the sour cream and lemon juice together with the zest. Alternate the dry and wet ingredients until you have an emulisified batter. Pour into a prepared pan and bake until done. There is no mystery at all. By melting the butter, you separated the components of the butter, water, fat and milk solids. It is better to keep the butter whole.
I hope this answers your questions.
Chef Tom Beckman
Baking and Pastry Instructor,
The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago
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8-29-2007 @ 12:40PM
tom beckman said...
Hi Marisa,
I made the cake yesterday with my class and you're not missing much. The cake is not good. I don't know what kind of baker Donna Hay is but I can think of many other cakes that are much better. I have suggested one below. After I baked the cake, I frosted it with a simple flat lemon icing. You know what my students said when they tasted it? "Well chef, the icing sure is good!" Ha! I have to wonder why so-called cookbook authors put up with such sub-par recipes with little to no testing. Well anyway, here's a great cake that I have developed with my students. It's bourbon rosemary but you can substitute lemon juice for the bourbon. Have fun!
Chef Tom Beckman
Baking and Pastry Instructor,
The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago
Bourbon Rosemary Coffee Cake
5 1/2 ounces Butter
9 ounces Sugar (about 1 1/4 cups)
2 teaspoons Rosemary, finely chopped
3 whole Eggs
3 Tablespoons Bourbon
8 ounces Cake Flour (about 1 1/2 cups)
3/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
3/4 teaspoon Salt
3/4 cup Buttermilk
Creaming Quickbread Method
325°F
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9-17-2007 @ 6:47PM
anabel said...
Hi there,
I actually work at donna hay magazine and asked the guys in our test kitchen (it's true we test everything!)
Our senior food editor said it looked as though you had baked it in a glass dish, is this right? If so that might be the problem. Slices, cakes, etc should always be baked in metal baking dishes as they generate heat quicker and stay hotter for longer, giving your cake or slice a quick burst of heat to start it cooking. Glass or ceramics are best for puddings (which might explain why it came out more like a pudding) because it's not as hot.
Hope this works!
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9-24-2007 @ 4:10PM
tom beckman said...
This is a reply to anabel from the donna hay folks. Cakes do bake differently in different pans. However, glass is an option if that's all you have. I baked the ill-fated cake in two metal pans and it was still nasty. The recipe has too much sugar, not enough leavener and needs more testing before you publish it. Good luck to you!
Chef Tom Beckman
Baking and Pastry Instructor
The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago
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