Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Luscious Lemon Loaf

Joe noted last night that I was waxing rhapsodic about summer foods (I think it was the wish for a big bowl of potato salad that clinched the deal).

Lemon sort of goes hand in hand with summer for me and I was wanting to give this a try so...

1/2 c softened butter
3/4 c white sugar
2 T VE Lemon Chiffon Fruit Dip Mix
2 eggs
1 1/2 c flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 c milk

Preheat to 349F (or round up if you insist). Prepare your loaf pan with your removal facilitator of choice and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar till fluffy and then beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk and then spoon into the pan and bake for 50-55 minutes or until golden. Cool before icing with Lemon Chiffon Icing (1/2 c of "spreadable light cream cheese" with 1 T of VE Lemon Chiffon).

Okay, warning: this is not a recipe for a wee loaf pan, this is a big loaf. The yield said 5 oz which sounds positively scant (oh, barely over a half cup!) but when it's given in metric, the truth is revealed... 1.5 L. Think about that for a second, think about how big a 2L milk carton is! If I seem especially fervent about it this time, it's because I'm cleaning burnt cake batter off of the bottom of my oven this afternoon. In my defense, this gets a lot of loft for something that, in batter form, closely resembles a pound cake. It made for the edges of the pan like a champ and was spilling over in no time.

The other thing to note is that the icing is probably only meant to cover the top of the loaf. I really like the looks of loaves that have been turned over on the plate though, I think they look like big chocolates so I tried. One half cup is a ridiculous amount of icing to try to spread over a cake and I really shouldn't have tried (I'm a professional, I should know better) but... anyway. The icing is scary it's so good (especially after I whipped it) and you really wouldn't want much more than that on the cake.

I left the Lemon Chiffon Blueberry Squares recipe for Erin to try. Over to you!

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