baby steps / lemon poppy seed perfect pound cake

Having just returned from out of town with a bit of a cold, I decided to start simply.  The very first recipe in The Cake Bible is perfect pound cake (page 25).  You can't get too much simpler than this--the ingredient list is incredibly brief.  Because I had an extra lone lemon lying around that I wanted to use up, I decided to try the lemon poppy seed variant (page 26), which involves adding a bit of lemon zest and some poppy seeds to the batter, and then brushing the finished cake with a simple lemon syrup.

 

The recipe is smaller than most, because, as Rose states, her trials with larger volumes of batter caused poorer texture in the cake.  As written, the cake is to be baked in a 4 cup loaf pan.  Since I did not have a medium sized loaf pan, I decided to use 3 mini loaf pans instead.  The batter filled to 2/3 - 3/4 full in each.

 

As you can see, the loaf actually split quite nicely by itself down the middle.  I did not enhance the split by making a cut in the loaf as described in the book, because, when I checked the loaves at 20 minutes, the batter was still too liquid to cut. 

After removing the loaves from the oven, I brushed them as instructed with lemon syrup (juice of one lemon and sugar) and wrapped in plastic wrap overnight to allow the syrup to fully saturate the cake.  The resulting cake had great lemon flavor, but was still a little dry and the crumb was dense.  I think I probably should have used more syrup and let the cakes soak even longer.  There were some dense spots in the cake that looked gummy, so I was concerned that the cake was underbaked, but I think this may actually have been uneven saturation from the syrup.

Ratings:

Overall - 5

Crumb - 3 / too dense and too dry for my liking, despite the syrup

Flavor - 7 / great lemon flavor, enhanced by both syrup and the lemon zest in the batter

Appearance - 4 / the loaves brown nicely on the sides; the cut surface had an uneven density

Ease of baking - 8 / requires minimal ingredients; the only extra steps are zesting and juicing the lemon   

Details:

Bakeware - 5 3/4" x 3 1/2" x 2 1/7" mini loaf pans (x3)

Oven temperature - 350 degrees

Bake time - 35 minutes

Notes - cakes were brushed with syrup and cooled, then wrapped airtight and allowed to sit for 24 hours before serving.