Lemon Ginger Pound Cake

Ugh. It’s definitely sickness season. The time of year when everyone is cooped up in small areas together, merrily spreading their germs with their fellow man. Share and share alike, ehh? I’m one of those people who absolutely HATES taking pills. I don’t react well to them half the time and anyway, I tend to believe that, for the most part, nature has provided a lot of cures (or at least treatments) in the plants and trees around us. So if I can get away with it, I resort to more natural treatments for minor ailments like colds, sniffles, etc.

One of the things I love is using a good amount of grated ginger in black or herbal teas. It’s got enough of a kick to it scent wise to help clear up a stuffy nose and the heat of the tea is both soothing and somewhat medicinal. If you add in lemon and honey, it’s darn tasty too. So it occurred to me that it would be cool to use the same flavors in a pound cake. This won’t do anything to make your cold better, but it tastes good, hehe. Lemon pound cake tends to be in most bakers repertoire (this one is based on the one from Luscious Lemon Desserts, though I drastically changed the oven temp; her extremely low baking temp has you end up with a lemon flavored brick, and changed some other things too) so it didn’t take much to just extend the idea to include the ginger. I didn’t do the honey because it just felt like it would be getting too busy. But you could easily sub out honey for the sugar in the glaze and make a honey lemon glaze.

I loved the flavor of this. It could use a bit more ginger though, so I’m going to write the recipe as if it had the extra ginger in it. Don’t think, “omg, that sounds like a lot!” It’s going into a good amount of cake batter and when I made it, I used a full tablespoon and it just wasn’t “there” enough.

You know the drill… 🙂

Lemon Ginger Pound Cake

• 3 1/4 cups flour, sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, room temp
• 2  cups sugar, divided
• 6 eggs, room temp
• 3/4 cup milk combined with
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1 teaspoon lemon oil (You can sub lemon extract if you must, but trust me when I say that lemon oil is always your better bet- I use Boyajian )
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons squeezeable ginger paste (found in tubes in the produce section of the grocery store)
• Lemon syrup-
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest

1. Preheat the oven to 335 and liberally grease and flour a 10 cup bundt style pan.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sifted flour, baking powder, and salt.
3. In another, larger bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating until just combined. Add in the lemon zest, ginger and flavorings and beat until combined.
4. Starting with the flour mixture, alternately add it then the milk mixture to the batter (flour, milk, flour, milk, flour), beating well after each addition.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake at 335 for 65 to 80 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. The color should be a nice golden brown. If it starts to brown too much, just lightly cover the top with a sheet of foil.
6. When done, let it cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, make the syrup for the top, which is easy peasy. Just combine the syrup ingredients in a small pot and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
7. Carefully turn the cake out onto the rack (set the rack above a cookie sheet to catch drips) and brush the hot syrup over the still hot cake, letting it soak in each time before adding more. Let the cake cool to room temp and then enjoy!

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Lemon Ginger Pound Cake