HCB: Golden Lemon Almond Cake

As I do not feel like making the Chocolate Tomato Soup cake for this week's HCB selection, I decided to play catch up and make something else from the book.

The lucky cake of the week is the Golden Lemon Almond Cake.

As a habit of making 1/2 a recipe, I thought of taking Rose's alternative suggestion - making 2/3 of the recipe and baking it in a loaf pan.

Of course as I am so used to halving recipes, I started well by toasting 2/3 of the almonds, and measuring 2/3 of the sugar, but then proceeded to measure 1/2 recipe of the flour and leavening, and then mixing all of them together. Okay, so I am not that adventurous that I want to try to bake the concoction - not to mention that it will be awfully sweet - so I threw away everything and started over. If I am a math whiz I can probably figure out what's missing and backtrack but math is pretty low on my list of skill sets :).

Anyway, so first things first, toast almonds! Then grind with some of the sugar until they say "MERCY!" Mix it with the flour, remaining sugar, leavening, and a lot of lemon zest. I used a little bit more than the recipe requires. In a separate bowl, eggs are whisked with a bit of sour cream, lemon oil, and vanilla. Then added in the remaining sour cream and butter to the flour mixture, mix and mix until they are incorporated. Lastly, added in the egg mixture in two additions. Mix, mix, and mix. Well okay, the KA is the one doing all the mixing, I was just standing there and timing the procedures :).

While the cake is baking, I made the syrup. Combined lemon juice and sugar over medium heat until the sugar dissolved. I am happy this recipe calls for turbinado sugar, it gives me a chance to use up my supply.

The cake looks awfully plain in it's loaf pan shape, so I whipped up some dreamy creamy white chocolate frosting and piped roses and rose buds all over. I made 2/3 of the recipe and still had a lot left, so I piped some cute words and presented the cake to hubby - who said "AWWW" at the writing, before he proceeded to chow down a little piece and gave his thumbs up :).

Tasting impressions:
It is so good. Very lemony and moist. It reminds me of a pound cake - a REALLY good one. The frosting adds a nice chocolate sweetness to it. This will definitely get made again and again!