Sour Cream and Lemon Pound Cake

Last night we had some friends over for dinner and a basket of lemons that need to be juiced so it seemed like the perfect occasion to try this out. I was not disappointed in this cake- it turned out moist and had the perfect lemon flavor, we garnished it with whipped cream and berries.

I was rushing to get this in the oven so I did not sift the dry ingredients and I used regular flour instead of cake flour. Also, I had no idea what a 16 cup tube pan was so I used a loaf pan and made two loaves of the cake. After an hour of baking I would check every five or ten minutes to see if it was done.

For those of you who are like me and do not know what a tube pan is, apparently it is just a pan with a tube in the middle like an angel food cake pan or a bundt pan. Chris looked it up for me after the fact.

Ingredients

• 3 cups cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 cups sugar
• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
• 1 cup sour cream

Preparation

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease 16-cup tube pan. Dust pan with cake flour; tap out excess flour.

Sift flour, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl at medium speed until fluffy. Gradually add sugar and beat 5 minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating just until combined after each addition. Beat in lemon juice and peel. Using rubber spatula, mix in dry ingredients. Mix in sour cream. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake cake until tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on rack 15 minutes. Cut around cake in pan. Turn out cake.

Carefully turn cake right side up on rack and cool completely. (Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Wrap in foil and let stand at room temperature.)

Recipe from epicurious.com

S'more Cookie Bars

You may have already seen mention of these on Mikey's blog, but I wanted to put them up in any case because they are fantastic and easy and I did not want to forget about them.

Recipe and photo are from Baked Perfection- I promise to upload my own photos in the future.

Recipe

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (approximately 7 full graham crackers)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 super-sized (5 oz.) dark chocolate bars (e.g. Hershey’s, Ghirardelli etc)
1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows)*

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and vanilla.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined. Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Place chocolate bars over dough. Two 5 oz. Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread marshmallow fluff evenly over the chocolate layer.

Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff. This is most easily done by putting the second half of the dough in a gallon size freezer bag. Use your palms to flatten it out, and then use scissors to cut down both long sides of the bag, so it will open up book-style. Open it up carefully, and the dough will stick on one side of the bag. Then place the bag, dough side down, on the other three layers. From there peel the bag up ad spread the dough where it is uneven.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars

*Sarah's Note: I purchased the small jar of marshmallow creme and put the whole thing in the recipe-it was just a little bit more than suggested but turned out well. I love marshmallow creme.

Makes 16 cookie bars.