Gourmet's Top Ten, April '09 - Lemon-Glazed Butter Cake
Isn't dessert for dinner just the best thing? Last night we indulged with Lemon-Glazed Butter Cake from this month's Top Ten Editors' Picks from Gourmet magazine, and it was delightful. Easy to make but delivering big flavor.
Here's my mise en place:
Minus the milk, because I poured it into my Pyrex measuring cup and then left it on the opposite counter. #Misefail!
Then I started measuring out the dry ingredients. With the flour, no sifting was required (yay!)--I just spooned the flour into the cup and leveled it off. No scooping, since that packs the flour down into the cup and can lead to a heavy cake. As usual, my odd size measuring cups came in super handy. If you don't have a set of these, I highly recommend picking one up. It's ridiculous how much I love them.
Once I had dry ingredients and wet ingredients mixed into separate bowls, I creamed the butter and sugar with my stand mixer until pale and fluffy. Since butter is the main flavor in the base cake, I went with my shmancy European import butter, Plugra, which I special order from Zingerman's, because that's the kind of dork I am.
After the eggs were beaten in, I alternated adding in the dry and wet ingredients, mixing at low speed until just incorporated.
Then I poured the batter into the buttered and floured caked pan, rapped it on the counter a few times to get rid of air bubbles (I love that part!) and stuck it in a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes.
It came out golden and pretty, although I mangled the top pretty good in the invert-from-pan-and-reinvert-onto-cooling-rack step.
The glaze, lemon juice and confectioner's sugar whisked together, was clear and sticky and hid none of my little rips and tears, but even if it had, this isn't one of those desserts you'd want to serve to company. At least, not to any company shallowly obsessed with style over substance. 
It looks quite plain and simple--which, of course, it is. That's its charm. Perfect for a summer's day picnic! Or a snowy April day when all you can do is wish for the bright warmth of June. (Note: Gourmet recommends waiting until the glazed cake is completely cooled, then dusting over it with powdered sugar, but of course we didn't wait for that last night. Maybe it would've been prettier if we had! But I have to say, we didn't mind the cake's slightly ragged appearance when we were gobbling it down.)
