Lemon Rosemary Bundt Cake | The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five, the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop. The house was quiet.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Aimee Bender
I turned 30 at the beginning of this year. It was an interesting milestone, that assumption that one should be filled with dread at the prospect of their thirties, the end of their carefree twenties. There's a slightly different feeling I have about it though, because in all honesty I think I probably had the mentality of someone in their thirties for the last six years. Declining any big nights out to instead stay in with a new television show, a book or a particularly delicious take away meal.
My 30th wasn't much different. After an incredible 10 course dinner at a local restaurant, my night was spent greedily watching reruns of Buffy (I forgot how amazing that show is) and scoffing slices of the lemon rosemary bundt cake I'd made earlier that day.
The inspiration for the cake came from a book that I surprisingly had many people recommend to me, insisting I'd find many meals I'd be wanting to recreate from its pages. Well, I had already read it and they were correct. I'd been wanting to find an excuse to make a lemon cake, I much prefer to the tartness of it compared to other cakes, and the glimpse of my copy of the book as I wandered past the bookshelf was enough to have me bundling up lemons at the local farmers market, and picking twigs of rosemary from a neighbours front yard.
This cake is quite delicious, enough so that between myself and my partner we practically demolished it within the day.
Lemon Rosemary Bundt Cake
IngredientsCake
2 1/4 cups plain flour
2/3 cup raw caster sugar
Zest of one lemon
2 sprigs of rosemary, stripped from the trig and diced very finely
1 tbsp vinegar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1tbsp cornflour
1/2 tsp salt
115g butter, softened
190ml milk
3 tbsp yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze1 cup icing sugar + extra just in case
Juice of one lemon
Cake
Preheat oven to 180C and prepare a 22cm bundt pan (if you have a different size one - it'll likely be totally fine) by greasing the inside thoroughly and then sprinkling a light scattering over flour throughout.
Combine the vinegar, yoghurt and the milk, leaving to the side for five minutes or until the milk curdles into buttermilk.
Sift the flour and cornflour together into a large bowl, adding in the bi-carb, baking soda, diced rosemary and salt.
In a seperate bowl cream together the butter and raw caster sugar until light and fluffy. Adding in the vanilla, zest and curdled milk, combine until well mixed.
Slowly add in the flour, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go and transfer into the prepared cake tin.
Bake for around 40 - 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave in the pan for at least 10 minutes before gently transferring it onto a cooling rack. Leave to cool completely before glazing.
Glaze
Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice into a bowl and mix until it is a firm glaze. You may need to add a little more icing sugar or a little more liquid - depending on how runny you want it to be.
Drizzle over the the cooled cake. You can garnish with some sprigs of rosemary, lemon zest or lemon slices - what ever you want. Enjoy!