- Hey, I'm John Kanell and
today on "Preppy Kitchen", we're making a delicious
"Lemon Pound Cake". So, let's get started. First off, set your
oven to 350 Fahrenheit, we want this nice and toasty and this recipe comes together in a snap. We're also prepping our
nine by five inch loaf pan, I'm using some parchment paper, you could just butter and flour it. We're gonna plop that right in there. Now, just like magic, you have a wonderful cozy place
for your cake, to pop out. Grab a medium bowl. I'm using a scale, because
it gives me the best results. I'm adding two and a half cups, or 300 grams of all-purpose flour. So, originally pound
cakes were four pounds and they were one pound of butter, one pound of sugar, one pound of flour, one pound of eggs, it's very easy to remember
and I have to tell you I actually baked up a
traditional pound cake, just as an exercise, was not
the best cake I've ever had, but it was tasty, I'd eat it. This is indeed better, we
play with the proportions and it has that amazing
lemon flavor, throughout. One teaspoon of salt and you might think, "Oh my gosh, that's a lot of salt", it actually will give you a nice balance and I wanna show you, this is kosher salt. They're fairly large pieces, that just means you're getting
less salt in your recipe and if you wanna see like what
the ultimate mega salt is, it's flaked sea salt, which is like this. We use this to finish recipes, like you could pop that on top of cookies and you have giant paper
thin flakes of salt that are crunchy and amazing. Just by the way, all this is to say, if you're using fine grained salt, which is like very powdery and small, I would actually go with half a teaspoon, or three quarters max, because
you're fitting a lot of salt into that measuring spoon. (electronic beeping) To leaven this up and
make it nice and fluffy, we're adding one and a half
teaspoons of baking powder. (upbeat music) In you go, my scale is done. Give us a whisk. This is an easy peasy
lemon squeezy recipe. Set that aside. Now, it is time to get to mixing,
you can use a stand mixer, or an electric hand mixer for this. I'm popping a paddle
attachment on this guy and now we gotta get the butter and I hope you have some nice
fresh lemons ready for this. Oh, my gosh. One cup of butter, 226 grams and it is not just any butter, it is softened, room temperature butter, so I wanna show you when you open it up, you should be able to
press it and it will yield. And I have to push a little
bit, but not too much. You want your butter to be able to whip up without falling apart, or just having little chunks of butter. If you ever had a cake that
was like kind of pocket marked, or had like little craters throughout, that's happening in part, because you had butter that was too cold. You had little chunks all the way through, which are delicious, we
all love chunks of butter, but when you bake your cake, what happens? It dissolves, it leaves a
void, we don't wanna do that. We want to have the butter mixed evenly with everything else, which
means, no little chunks. (electric mixer whirring)
Let this mix on medium high for about three minutes, you'll see it's nice and fluffy and it even changes color, because of all the air
you've whipped up into it. I'm gonna scrape this bowl
down, at least one time. The butter tends to move up in your bowl if you're using a stand mixer and it gets packed in the
side, as opposed to fluffed up, so scraping it down is
always a nice thing to do. If you're using a hand mixer, you don't really have to worry about that, 'cause you're raking the
sides as you move along. While this finishes mixing,
I'm gonna measure out one and a quarter cups, or
250 grams of granulated sugar. Just about three minutes later, I wanna show you the
difference in the butter. So, where we're at now,
it's looking nice and creamy and you can actually see
a difference in the color, it's lightened up, it's
significantly fluffier. Now, on medium speed, once again, I'm gonna slowly add my sugar in and I wanna beat this
for about two minutes until it is nice and fluffy. Your pound cake will have a
lighter, more delicate crumb if you beat some air into it
with the butter and sugar, so that's why we're doing this extra step of going a little bit slower,
instead of just dumping it in. I never understood until
I moved to the east coast and experienced the seasons, how weather can affect your baking, 'cause I grew up in
California, in Los Angeles. It's a little cold today,
it's actually freezing, so even though my butter
was like a nice temperature, the countertop is sucking
heat out of everything. So, you might have to
scrape your bowl down, be a little bit extra
mixey with your butter, just to get it all fluffed up. (electric mixer whirring) A few minutes of mixing
later, this looks great. It's light, it's fluffy, it has that wonderful,
like, "Hmm", consistency. So now, where is the lemon flavor? It's coming from two places, the lemon zest and the lemon juice. A rasp is my favorite tool
in the kitchen at the moment and it's so multipurpose. It can take just the
edge of citrus skin off, like lemons, oranges, whatever and that's where all of
the flavor and oils are. The pith is a little bitter,
no flavor, we don't want it. So, just the edge and
we're taking this off. (electronic beeping) Beautiful lemon zest, we're
just gonna pop that in. If you're making this at home
and you don't have a zester, you don't have a rasp, you go
ahead and use a sharp knife and pair the skin off carefully, mince it up and you're good to go. And if you don't wanna
have any of those chunks, 'cause it's really hard
to get a fine consistency, you could actually pop
that into your blender, or a food processor with the
sugar to make lemon sugar. I love doing that in recipes. The recipe calls for about
a tablespoon of lemon zest, in my mind that is one whole lemon and if you wanna go crazy,
add some more zest in there. It's not gonna do it any harm, it'll just make it even
more lemony and delicious. I'm actually gonna start
mixing this in right now on medium speed, just
to give it some abrasion to really force those oils out. In the meantime, I'm going
to cut my naked lemon and juice it up. So many seeds, I don't want those seeds. So, strain this out. We want about three
tablespoons of lemon juice and depending on your lemon, that could be the juice of one lemon, the juice of half a lemon,
or the juice of two lemons, it really depends on if
it's nice and juicy, or dry. Adding lemon to your cake doesn't just make it delicious
with that wonderful zing, the acid in it is doing
two special things. One, in many cakes, we
add a little bit of acid, like lemon juice, or vinegar,
like in red velvet cake, to give it a little bit of a lift. They help react with
things like baking soda and give you more
bubbling, more reactions, lighter, fluffier cake. But in this cake, what's happening is, the hydrogen plus ions in
acids like lemon juice, sour cream, buttermilk, whatever, inhibit the folding of proteins. So, this will stop the gluten from forming and making your cake
like dense and stretchy and they'll stop the egg
proteins from coagulating, too. Just don't add too much
or bad things happen. (electronic beeping) I'm adding in three
tablespoons of my juice and this is a nice, really lemony lemon. My sister-in-law jokes
that my brother and I are addicted to lemon, because
we put lemon in everything. I blame it on the Greek side. In you go. I have a little bit
left over for my icing, so don't toss that. I need four eggs and I'm not
feeling that brave today, because I've had eggs
just crumble in my hands with like powdery shells. I wanna crack these into
a bowl, one at a time and make sure we do not
have any stray shells, those are horribly undelicious. (electronic beeping) Add those eggs in one at a time and cracking the egg into another bowl, is a great way to pace yourself, 'cause it gives that first
egg time to incorporate. Two. Three. Last egg in and I see some problems here, I wanna show you what's going on. On top, I have soupy egg
business, but on the bottom I have a lot of compacted
sugar and butter. See that? Scrape the bowl down and
then we're gonna mix this up until it's really nice and combined, I don't want clumps of butter
anywhere, you know why. (electronic beeping) That looks much better. I do see suspended tiny bits
of butter, but that's okay. We're gonna say, "Hello" to our
flour mixture one last time. I'm also grabbing half a cup,
or a 120 mils of whole milk, you could use like your favorite
milk alternative in that, if you want, it's totally fine. Now, with our mixer on low, we're gonna add the flour in and plop in maybe a couple batches, alternating with my milk. So, maybe add half of the milk right now, another third of the flour, the rest of the milk and the remaining flour. You don't wanna overmix your batter, you know at home that it'll
make your dough gummy and dense and just not delicious. Now, I didn't mix this
up until it's combined. This has a lot of flour,
but I'm done using my mixer. We're gonna finish it off by hand, because I want this to have the most delicate, amazing crumb and when you overmix your batter, you're gonna activate
the gluten in the flour and it'll be more bready,
stretchy, gummy, dense and I don't want my cake
to be gummy and dense. That's good, the flour's all gone. Pour your cake batter into
your prepared loaf pan. Our lemon pound cake is
ready to go into the oven, 350 for about 65 to 70 minutes, or until a toothpick
inserted in the center, comes out clean. While our cake is cooling, we can make a really easy,
delicious lemon glaze. And I wanna explain something
I get asked about a lot. Namely, what is the difference
between a lemon pound cake and a lemon drizzle cake, if any? They're very similar and my
UK friends can back me up, or correct me, but a lemon pound cake will be drizzled with
icing after it's cooled and the icing will sit on top. That's one cup of
powdered sugar by the way and I'm adding in a healthy
tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, there you go. Drizzle that in, it's so much flavor. A lemon drizzle cake has the
glaze poured on while it's hot and it kinda like soaks into the cake more and you have like a thin
film of glaze all over, slightly different, both delicious. You can let me know what
you prefer in the comments. Two teaspoons of milk. Yeah, if you wanted to, you could use all lemon juice, by the way. And as an optional little addition, I'm adding some fresh lemon zest. Mix that up. Any glaze you start, looks a little
disappointing to begin with, see, it's just powdered
sugar with some liquid, but it will come together,
just give it time. Just a little bit of mixing and that powdered sugar
will absorb the lemon juice and milk it needed to and if that doesn't happen, you can add a drop or two more liquid. (electronic beeping) And now, you can see, it's a nice drizzling
consistency, just like that. If you're making this ahead of time, go ahead and just cover this
up with paper, or plastic film, so it doesn't develop a skin and harden, it will set up pretty quickly
and make drizzling less fun. We're ready to drizzle this with our amazing lemon drizzle frosting. Drizzle all over, I
want complete coverage. Give it a slice and it's ready to enjoy. So tender, moist and just
melt in your mouth, amazing, with a lovely lemon flavor, throughout. I hope you get a chance
to make this recipe and if you like my videos, check out my "Love Cake" playlist.
