This Week’s Recipe: Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake

Inspiration: Recently, one of my husband’s coworkers left for greener pastures, and he asked if I could bake one or two things for their going away party.

The theme of the gathering: When life gives you lemons…

Not one to say no when given a chance to bake, I hit my cookbook library and found (amongst others) America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe for a Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake! What first drew me in is that it’s glazed — not frosted. Since I needed to complete another four bakes that day, I found this an attractive feature, and it turned out beautifully on the very first try!

One of the keys to baking a cake from scratch, I learned from the Great British Bakeoff and repeated in the instructions — you need to make sure your butter, buttermilk, and eggs are all at room temperature when you start assembling the batter….then recall you’ve set them aside. Since it takes A WHILE for them to reach the requested ambient temp.

Ask me how I know.

Fortunately, since I was whipping up all kinds of other stuff, this step didn’t prove a problem….for once.

As for the required cake flour, don’t let that intimidate you — if you sift 1 cup of regular all-purpose flour twice, then take out 1 Tablespoon, you’ve got one cup of cake flour.

Helpful Hint: You don’t need all the glaze the recipe calls for. If you halve this portion of the recipe, you’ll still have more than enough to thoroughly coat your cake top!

Christie: Tangy, lemony, and not overly sweet. I can see Tuppence baking this cake as a treat for Tommy and their kids on a random Saturday in Spring!

(Someday I’ll manage to consistently put the right book in my baking photos….But today’s not that day.)