I love lemon. I will choose a lemon dessert or dish over anything else, including chocolate. Right now our tiny tree at my family’s home is bursting with delicious Meyer lemons, which means I am baking them into all of my favorite deserts as well as trying a few new ones.

After collecting a few ripe lemons from the backyard I decided to make a Meyer lemon bundt cake that my mom had found. I got most of the recipe from a video that America’s Test Kitchen had published, but they refuse to give the full recipe and instead insist that you pay for it. As a broke college student I decided to get crafty, and I was able to find the full recipe on a site that was nice enough to just let you enjoy this zingy, flavorful cake.

Ingredients:

3 lemons (depending on size and tartness of lemon), zested and juiced for 3 tablespoons of juice and as much zest as possible

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk

3 eggs + 1 egg yoke

18 tablespoons butter (2 1/4 sticks)

2 cups sugar

and as always, local and organic are best!

One nice thing about making a cake is that there are so few ingredients. It blows me away that people buy packaged cakes. It only takes a few more minutes to make a cake completely from scratch. Not to mention that mixing your ingredients at home means it has less packaging, fewer chemicals, and you choose your exact ingredients and where they came from.

The last time I made a bundt cake I forgot to prep the pan. It was a disaster. I spent forever trying to pry the poor thing out and I ended up having to pull it out in mangled pieces. After that experience it always comes pretty quickly to me that I always need to grease the pan. America’s Test Kitchen had a great little tip to melt one tablespoon of butter and mix it with one tablespoon of flour before using a brush to coat the inside of the pan. It was quick and I have never had a cake come out so smoothly or perfectly.

To make this cake as delicious as possible it is glazed twice. Once right out of the pan so the heat of the cake melts the glaze into it and again an hour later once the cake has cooled more to give it the bright white glaze we all love.

Although this cake is by no means healthy, it is nice to indulge every once in a while with a tasty treat. This cake is great for parties or just to share with family, friends, and people in your dorm (especially if you are worried you might eat it all yourself).

my brother has been lusting after scones for months now. i see him at least once a week and each time he brings up scones more than once. the problem with this is that i did not start out wanting scones, but the more he mentioned them, the more i wanted them too. i finally gave in and made us some scones.