Lemony dessert sure to tickle taste buds

Where some people have a sweet tooth, others have a sour tooth: they like lemons, limes and other pucker provoking fare. So when Marguerite Gallison of Bangor asked for lemon cake baked in a small tin, “yellow like cake, but more firm than cake,” and when it is out of the oven, “drizzled with a tangy lemon glaze all over,” a little spot at the back of my jaw tingled in anticipation.

Margaretta Thurlow, in Lincolnville and Ruth Thurston in Machias both sent along recipes to try, and what with the Magaretta/Marguerite and Thurston/Thurlow I was feeling a little scrambled for awhile. (She didn’t say she recalled it, but Margaretta and I had a conversation a long time ago about the dandelion greens that she remembers her mother harvesting and cooking up with salt pork.)

Ruth Thurston got her lemon cake recipe from a friend who modified it from a cookbook by dessert-doyenne Maider Heatter. Margaretta Thurlow got hers from a friend who, she reports, “dusts the greased surface of any cake pan with very fine bread crumbs instead of flour,” a practice that Margaretta follows now.

I hybridized the two recipes, adding the grated lemon rind suggested in Ruth’s recipe to the somewhat plainer cake in Magaretta’s, and since the directions for the glaze from Ruth’s seemed tangier, I used that for the drizzle. Maybe we should call this Margaretta Thurlow’s Lemon Cake. It is very lemony, and one of the people who tried it at my house said she thought it would be really good with blueberry sauce on it.

I baked it in two smaller pans, as Marguerite recalled, though you can make just one loaf out of it if you want. If it proves too tangy for you, leave the peel out of the cake, and add more sugar to the glaze.

Looking for…

Kristen Lainsbury of Orono is looking for “a recipe – or 20! – for Swiss chard. Last year I grew more of it than I needed, and I got so tired of saut?ing it that I swore I’d never grow it again. Of course, I planted more this year! Now I need to figure out what to do with it. I’m looking for something creative, not the standard olive oil, balsamic and garlic saut?.”

Lemon Cake

For the cake:

1 cup white sugar

1 cup (scant) (or two sticks minus 1 tablespoon) butter

2 eggs

11/2 cups regular flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking power

1/2 cup milk

Finely grated rind of one lemon

For the glaze:

4 tablespoons lemon juice

7 tablespoons sugar

More grated rind (optional)

Cream the butter and sugar together; add the eggs and beat well. Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the butter mixture, alternatively with milk. Stir in the lemon rind. Bake at 350 F. If you use a regular loaf pan, (9-by-5-by- 2 1/2 inches) bake it for 45 minutes. If using two smaller pans (7 1/2-by-3 1/2-by-2 inches), bake for 35 minutes, or until a tester inserted comes out clean. Make sure the loaf pans are well-greased and dusted with flour or very fine bread crumbs.

Heat the lemon juice and sugar together to make sure the sugar is dissolved and stir in additional grated peel, if desired. Take the cake out of the oven and let cool for about three minutes. Remove from the pans and put on a wire rack over a pan or a piece of aluminum foil to catch drips. Spoon the glaze all over the cake top, and even tip them up on edge to drizzle along the sides. Allow to finish cooling before serving.