Wanting to make a dessert for the gathering of a few friends, I found a recipe for lemon cake in my 1877 cookbook. I love lemon desserts and decided to try this recipe originally submitted by Miss M. B. Fullington.

I have to confess that I had to make this dessert twice. Miss Fullington didn’t give a lot of details with her instructions. Since the recipe calls for 7 eggs, I went through a lot of eggs to get this right. The batter consistency for this first batch was all wrong—not at all the creamy texture I expected. When I noticed that the cook hadn’t even mentioned baking the cake, I realized that a few important details were missing.

I tasted the batter—buttery with nice hint of lemon. I decided to remake with a couple of changes that I will note along the way.

Set aside 2 cups of flour in a bowl. If using all-purpose flour as I do, add 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Separate 7 eggs with the yolks in one bowl and reserve the whites in another. Beat the egg whites until light and fluffy. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, add 2 cups sugar, the zest of 2 lemons, the juice of 1 lemon, the egg yolks, and ¾ pound butter (3 sticks—I know! It’s a lot of butter. They ate more butter than we do now. I followed Miss Fullington’s recipe but believe it would still work with less.) The recipe does not call for lemon extract, but I added 1 teaspoon of the extract to enhance the flavor—good call!

Beat these ingredients together, adding a little flour at a time. Then fold in the beaten egg whites. My mixer has a FOLD button that works wonderfully for this.

This time the batter was light and creamy with the perfect amount of lemon flavor. Yum!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a cake pan with cooking spray. If using a 13 x 9 pan, bake about 35 – 40 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. If using an 8 x 8 pan, bake about 50 – 60 minutes.

I made white icing following Betty Crocker’s Vanilla Buttercream Frosting recipe.

The whole cake tasted delicious. It has a wonderful buttery lemon flavor. Loving the lemony dessert, my guests ate every last crumb on their plates.

One person mentioned that he tasted an eggy flavor. I agreed. In my opinion, the number of eggs can be reduced to four or five. Also, the amount of butter can be reduced–perhaps to about ½ cup.

I’d love to hear if you try it.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

Compiled from Original Recipes. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, Applewood Books, 1877.