Neiman Marcus has its cookiesThe Waldorf has its namesake saladand the Ritz-Carlton has this lemon pound cake. Or not less than that’s how the legend goes.
According to the web, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel used to serve a practically-famous lemon pound cake in its tea room within the Twenties. Now, TikTokers and foodies in every single place are attempting to recreate the dessert—saying their recipes will prevent the hundreds of {dollars} it prices to remain on the notoriously pricy Ritz-Carlton.
The solely drawback? The Ritz-Carlton doesn’t serve this lemon pound cake now, and there’s no available proof that it ever did. We tried reaching out to the Ritz-Carlton to unravel it however by no means heard again.
So, in actuality, this may simply be somebody’s grandma’s old school pound cake recipe with the Ritz-Carlton title slapped on it to achieve web traction (which clearly labored). Or, it’d truly be the recipe for a lemon pound cake that the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Coco Chanel loved on the luxurious lodge.
Whatever the origin story, I by no means go up the possibility to make a pound cake. And with the nice and cozy climate lastly breaking, the thought of a zesty lemon pound cake was actually an autumn dream. So I got down to work.
How to Make the Ritz-Carlton Lemon Pound Cake
Bailey Fink
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup salted butter, softened at room temperature
- 1/2 cup shortening
- 3 cups white sugar
- 5 giant eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup complete milk
- 6 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed
- Zest from one lemon
- Confectioners’ sugar (optionally available)
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 levels F (175 levels C). Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.
- Sift collectively flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Set apart.
- Cream butter, shortening, and sugar in a separate bowl with an electrical mixer till effectively mixed. Add in eggs, separately, beating effectively after every addition. Alternate including flour combination and complete milk till simply mixed. Mix in lemon juice and lemon zest. Pour batter into the ready pan.
- Bake within the preheated oven till a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clear, about 55 minutes. Let stand for about 10 minutes, then run a knife alongside the perimeters and invert the pan onto a cooling rack. Allow to chill fully.
- Dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired.
I Tried the Ritz-Carlton Lemon Pound Cake
The Ritz-Carlton pound cake is de facto simply your conventional lemon pound cake recipe—it jogs my memory of our Old-Fashioned Lemon Pound Cake recipesimply made with contemporary lemon juice as an alternative of bottled extract. Like most old school recipes there’s one secret ingredient that makes it style so good—and it’s one that you just’ll discover in loads of your favourite recipes out of your grandma: Crisco.
There’s nothing like good, outdated vegetable shortening to make a cake extra wealthy and delicious.
The most essential factor to recollect about this recipe is the blending. You want to actually beat the eggs into the batter, which is why you beat them in individually—or as my grandma’s well-known pound cake recipe says, “mix to beat the band” Your guess is pretty much as good as mine as to what which means, however we simply at all times assume it means actually whip these eggs in there as a result of the longer you beat the eggs the higher your batter might be.
On the opposite hand, once you add within the flour and milk, you don’t wish to beat as lengthy. Once the flour and milk are simply barely mixed, you wish to cease beating to keep away from overmixing, which may end up in a dense pound cake.
At the tip of this recipe, I did have additional lemon juice and whereas my intuition was so as to add it to the batter, I selected to not as a result of I used to be afraid it will be too puckeringly bitter. However, in the long run, I want that I had. Unlike lemon extract, contemporary lemon juice gained’t offer you that acidic, cleansing solution-like style so an additional tablespoon (or two) wouldn’t harm it.
My one phrase of recommendation is to actually spray and flour your pan. Because each baker’s greatest worry occurred to me once I lifted my Bundle pan and large chunks of the cake had been sticking to it. “Oh, that’s nothing slightly confectioners’ sugar can’t cover,” I lied to myself as I vigorously dusted sugar snow over the cake.
But, I’m a agency believer that presentation isn’t as essential as style—and boy did this cake style scrumptious. It’s gentle, moist, and fairly flavorful even if there aren’t any extracts in it. As I stated, I want I’d added extra lemon juice, however the cake remains to be citrus-forward—simply not hit-you-in-the-face lemony. The lemon is extra on the again finish, which makes it a pleasant, gentle cake.
Whether or not this cake was truly served on the Ritz-Carlton doesn’t matter to me, it’s nonetheless an ideal recipe that I’ll be including to my rotation.
