11/10/2023
🍋 is YUM
Bake a Buttery Lemon Bundt Cake with me!
💙🍋💙
• Ingredients •
Sift together:
255g Cup-4-Cup Gluten Free Flour
1 tsp salt
1 & ½ tsp Baking Powder
ÂĽ tsp Ginger
2 tablespoons ground Sugar
Set aside:
270g Castor Sugar (Baker’s Sugar, or, finely ground granulated sugar)
113 - 115g Butter
100g Vegetable Oil
110g Buttermilk
105g Lemon Juice
4 Eggs, separated
3 heaping tablespoons of Lemon Zest
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
â…› tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
â…› tsp Almond Extract
For crust:
ÂĽ cup King Arthur Baking Almond Flour
1 stick of butter
• Method •
Set aside four hours of your life. This will be worth it. Baking is bliss.
Bring four eggs, two sticks of butter, and 110 grams of buttermilk out of the refrigerator to slowly settle at room temperature (keep sealed in sterile containers whilst warming). Check butter with meat or candy thermometer periodically to ensure you’re waiting until it reaches exactly 65° before creaming (stick back in fridge momentarily if warming too quickly while completing preparatory steps).
Wash six large organic lemons, zest six large organic lemons, juice six large organic lemons.
Breathe.
Weigh out 110 grams lemon juice, measure three heaping tablespoons of zest, set aside in separate containers next to butter, eggs, and buttermilk.
Weigh out 300 grams of granulated sugar and grind in a *dedicated* coffee grinder on the finest setting in four parts, 3x’s for each quarter. Sift over bowl atop scale to weigh out 270 grams of this finely ground sugar. Set the extra 30 grams aside for use later. Sift the 270 grams 4x’s.
Breathe. (Be sure to wear a mask or you just took a sweet, sugary breath.)
Set sugar in bowl next to lemon juice, lemon zest, buttermilk, eggs, and butter.
Weigh 255 grams of Cup-4-Cup Gluten Free flour; add 1/4 teaspoon ground organic ginger, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and sift together in larger bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the extra finely ground sugar. Sift 8x’s, until the mixture simply falls through the sieve. Set aside next to sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, buttermilk, eggs, and butter.
Remember your mask, open a window, maybe turn on a fan, and...
breathe.
Weigh 100 grams of vegetable oil into individual container and set aside next to the flour, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, buttermilk, eggs, and butter.
Breathe... no, wait!
Check the temperature on your butter!
..if it’s between 62-63°, breathe.
Preheat oven to 325°.
Use one of these previously set aside sticks of butter to butter your bundt tin. Don’t use the entire stick, but hold it by the stick to be sure you run through every groove and across every surface evenly for two or three layers. Don’t over butter, but don’t leave any dry spots or uneven clumps of butter.
Place 1/4 cup of King Arthur Baking Almond Flour in sieve and gently sift over buttered bundt pan until a light, even coat of almond flour covers every surface of the tin. Tip tin around in circles each direction while lightly tapping to ensure flour completely coats each grove and indentation.
Crack and separate 4 eggs, set aside yolks, whip whites until soft peaks form and set aside next to flour, sugar, butter, oil, buttermilk, lemon juice, lemon zest, and buttered bundt tin.
Wash your beaters and dry them WELL.
Check the temperature of your butter. If it’s lower than 65°, take a few deep breaths whilst double and triple checking your set aside buttered bundt tin, lemon zest, lemon juice, buttermilk, oil, eggs, butter, sugar, and flour.
Set vanilla extract, almond extract, and apple cider vinegar next to a 1/8 teaspoon and a teaspoon nearby for easy addition into the batter at the right stage.
Check oven temperature to ensure 325°.
If the butter’s over 65°, you took too long, stick it back in the fridge until it cools to 65°. If it’s still under 65°, wait. If it’s exactly at 65°, the perfect temperature for emulsification, get ready, you’re about to make a cake.
Breathe, remember?
You’ve got this. You are a confident, capable, and skilled human being. You are baking.
Drop one stick (113-115 grams) of 65° butter into a bowl and beat with mixer on low several times around until it’s spread out, fluffy, but before it starts getting wet or glossy. Less is more. Sift sugar into bowl. Aggressively fold sugar and butter together with rubber spatula until smooth, well creamed, not grainy, but still firm (and has not started to separate. It should have a matte finish and not lose it’s resistance. Don’t over work the butter! There’s a lot more to incorporate and one too many folds at any stage can be the difference between a light fluffy batter and a split, separated mess). Fold in one egg yolk, whisk if there are wet spots that don’t turn matte upon folding, but don’t whisk too much! Fold with your whisk, don’t whip. Fold in another egg yolk, same process, go slow, fold in another egg yolk, be careful, last egg, fold in, before it’s worked all the way into batter carefully measure 1/8 of a teaspoon apple cider vinegar, 1/8 teaspoon almond extract, and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and drop into the bowl at spaced intervals, scrape the sides of the bowl and bring the batter together completely while gently folding. Fold with whisk to incorporate oil, slowly, little at at time, one fold, one pour, one fold, one pour, one fold, one pour, watch the batter and be sure it maintains resistance without going slack, don’t over work, don’t add too quickly. Do the same with buttermilk, slowly, one fold at a time, three to four additions, don’t be afraid to hold some back if it looks like your batter is splitting. If the batter still has a matte finish and feels fluffy, work in your lemon juice in the same manner. Hold some back to prevent splitting if your batter looks too wet... If your batter has begun to separate, don’t worry, sift a small amount of flour on top before adding lemon juice, fold slowly together until the matte finish returns, once flour has been added you have to work the mixture *very* gently using as few folds as possible to not overwork the batter and avoid a rubbery cake... If everything’s looking good get the last of your lemon juice and buttermilk in there before sifting 1/4 of your flour on top, adding 1/4 of the whipped egg whites, and one heaping tablespoon of zest, and fold, adding the additional quarters of flour, whites, and zest slowly upon each turn of the batter around the bowl, fold until there are no visible lumps of flour, but *before it loses it’s resistance and goes slack* - it’s better to be undermixed than overworked! At the exact moment it appears that you’re holding a bowl full of light, fluffy, smooth cake batter and not an instant past that point, gently spoon into prepared bundt pan and spread evenly, tap the tin *gently* on the counter a couple times to ensure no large air pockets (and prevent it from tearing upon turning out of the tin), and... breathe...
pray...
.. swiftly and gently open the oven door, set the tin in the middle of the center rack (or best aligned to your oven’s individual hot spots), and GENTLY close the oven door. You don’t want to lose too much heat, but you don’t want to slam anything or set your tin down too firmly... think “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” and tell yourself so in Phil Dunphy’s voice.
Set a timer for 55 minutes.
Wash up... but be careful! No loud noises, no knocking the oven, no slamming cupboards or countertops... your cake is rising!
Turn on the oven light and watch your cake rise... if it rises quickly and then drops it might have had too much baking powder or buttermilk (raising agents), if it flattens and firms it might have had over (or under) whipped whites, if it bubbles and sinks it has split... don’t worry, this will only affect texture, it’s still going to taste like hundreds of grams of butter, sugar, and lemon... it will still be an edible cake. If it rises well and holds past the forty minute mark, praise the Good Lord and call the relatives, you’re going to want a social media post about this.
Whatever you do, DON’T OPEN THE OVEN!
Check at 55 minutes, quickly open the oven to rotate the tin (gently!) 180° to ensure an even bake on the outer crust... it’s probably got another ten to go, but you want to give it an eyeball and make sure nothing’s out of sorts. Be quick about it! You don’t want to lose too much heat from the oven.
Keep breathing...
..check again at 60 minutes...
..stick a skewer in the center and see if it comes out clean, look for a lightly browning crust around the edges, touch the top which should be dry-and-springing-back, listen for the boiling in that tin to become a simmer (yet not silent or you will have over baked). It will probably need another 3-5 minutes...
..repeat the process at 65 minutes... be careful... it’s either done, nearly done, or overdone... the boil should be a simmer, that skewer should be clean, but those sides shouldn’t be too dark and you want a robust scent with nothing “caught”; no singe or scorch to the smell.
At 67 minutes, you’re burning your cake, what are you doing?!?
Get that thing out of the oven already!
Remove from oven and set on an elevated cooling rack in a safe spot in your kitchen away from any errant breezes or drafts. Wait five minutes... be patient, but don’t wait any longer than five minutes... put a large cake board, plate, or platter on top of your bundt tin and invert your cake... you should hear the most satisfying “schlplop” you can imagine as the cake drops cleanly and clearly away from the pan. (If the crust sticks, use more butter in the tin next time, if the cake breaks, cry, then turn it out sooner on the next attempt).
Let cool for 30 minutes before slicing and serving, or an hour before sealing and saving.
Congratulations! You’ve made a buttery lemon bundt cake. 💙🍋🥮
And, if things turn out terribly...
Take a minute. Have a cup of coffee.
..Eat some bad lemon cake...
Think about how beautiful it was to feel matter molded together by sheer will with focused thought and confident action, how human intention butts against the immutable absolutes of our physical reality while the chemical bonds of simple ingredients are taken to their breaking point but not beyond, hear the shushing and swishing of soft batter against a smooth bowl as sheer love is fluffed and folded between the molecules before you.
Remember why you wanted to taste this particular sensation on your tongue and with whom you had already thought of sharing that experience... imagine their face break into a million micro expressions of emotion as the particles you’ve just worked so lovingly together traverse their Byzantine conduit of biological cognition and interact with their brain chemistry in the form of feelings and memories and thoughts... and then role play the barrage of excuses and explanations about the process and how it’s so nearly there, but not quite right, but you can just FEEL how much better it can be on the next bake if only this, and if only that, and if only another thing, and they just won’t believe the difference if you only had another shot at this recipe while the fullness of potential wells up inside your soul until all there is to do is...
..bring four eggs, two sticks of butter, and 110 grams of buttermilk out of the refrigerator to slowly settle at room temperature and try again.
OR,
..make a blueberry bundt cake!
..or, a rum cake with whipped white chocolate and KahlĂşa ganache!
..or, a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and cherry almond buttercream, or, a mud cake with chocolate buttercream and dark-chocolate-amaretto ganache, or, a lava cake with peanutbutter buttercream and caramel frosting, or, a spice cake with cinnamon-sugar buttercream and raspberry curd, or... cookies anyone? How about a brownie?
Here, have another, everything’s gluten free.💙
