Tasty cake

Quick post this time (as quick as mine ever are), since I'm already posting this incredibly late.  I was very excited that one of my favorite food bloggers and Twitter friends got to pick our Tuesdays with Dorie recipe last week.  Nancy has two wonderful blogs, one devoted to yeasted creations and the other a wonderful collection of sweet and savory dishes.  She's a woman after my own heart, posting her recipe notes and often figuring out the math to fit a recipe to the pan(s) she wants to use. =)  And I've been fortunate enough to bake along with her on quite a few occasions, with recipes from all sorts of different sources.

For this week's TWD pick, she selected a wonderfully easy and tasty cake for  us to make, Swedish Visiting Cake.  As Dorie indicates in the recipe notes, this one is quick to mix up and bake.  That's good, because I decided to tackle it before work one morning last week.  I'm happy to say that it was indeed quick and easy.  Part of the reason I was baking early in the morning was because I wanted to take some of the cake to someone who was nice enough to do a favor for me.  So I decided to make the full recipe, but split the batter between my two 6" round pans.  That way I would have one to give away and the other for us to taste.  I greased my pans with baking spray, and thought about lining them with parchment, but decided to go with out it.

Mixing the batter reminded me a bit of the French Yogurt Cake (before I played around with it).  First you rub lemon zest into sugar, which smells wonderful. =)  Then you whisk in the eggs, flavorings and salt.  (I stuck with just the vanilla extract, since I don't like almond extract very much.)  Then you stir in the flour, and at the end you fold in melted butter.  Once in the pan, the batter gets topped with sliced almonds and a sprinkling of sugar (I used coarse decorating sugar).  My cakes only needed 20 minutes to bake.  After letting the cakes cool in the pans for about 10 minutes, I was able to carefully turn them out onto a couple of plates to cool.  (I really need to get some more disposable plates for when I'm giving stuff away--the only ones I have are pink or Princess.)  When I got home from work that night, I decided to dress up the cake that I kept with a bit more lemon.  I made a glaze with some juice from the lemon I zested, plus some powdered sugar.

The verdict?  This cake was very tasty.  Great for sharing, whether with people coming over or if you're the one doing the visiting.  For the cake that I gave away, I don't know what the recipient thought of it.  I ate the other one over the course of several days.  No one else actually got to sample it.  Oops.  =)  It's excellent with tea.  I'll definitely be making this one again.  I think it would be fun to try different types of zest for flavoring, or add some sort of fruit.  

If you'd like to try this one for yourself, head on over to Nancy's blog.  She has the recipe as well as some great process pictures.  And be sure to see what the other TWD bakers thought of this one!