Tuesdays with Dorie: Lemon Loaf

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is for Lemon Loaf, which is a lemon cake baked in a loaf pan and pretty much the easiest recipe in the Baking with Julia book. I originally was going to pass on making the recipe because I just made cookies on Friday (which, uh... are gone already, though in my defense we DID share a third of them with a friend!), but we love lemon so at the last minute decided to run to the store and grab the necessary ingredients. As usual, I'm not supposed to share the actual recipe, but the recipe hosts have the recipe typed up on their blogs: Treats and The Beauty of Life.


The verdict: First of all, the batter is really nice to work with. I followed the directions exactly and mixed it up by hand instead of with my stand mixer. The batter was so silky and rich with 4 eggs, cream, and butter, and the lemon smelled so good that my bunnies were all getting antsy. Unfortunately, the baked cake is definitely lacking in flavor and texture. You can taste some lemon, but not a lot, and there aren't any other flavors to speak of other than being kind of sweet. The second strike against it is the decidedly dry and firm texture in spite of all the eggs, butter, cream, and cake flour. We were expecting pound cake but it's more like bread and does indeed slice very nicely. It would probably be quite good sliced, toasted, and topped with a good strawberry jam. I know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow! All in all, I don't regret trying this one, but it won't be a repeat. There's another lemon pound cake recipe that I make that's one of my husband's all time favorite desserts (which is high praise since he loves sweet things so much), so I'll just stick to that one!

Anyone have ideas for what to do with 3 naked lemons?

 UPDATE:  The flavor of the bread definitely improved after a day.  The flavor is fairly well rounded now and the lemon zest is more noticeable (as it should be, I put in the zest of 3 lemons!).  It could still benefit from a bit of vanilla extract or even almond extract, though, and the texture is still dry.  Overall, it still leaves something to be desired if you want to serve it as a dessert all on its own.