These are tiny sweet lemony bites from heaven. Oh my.
I didn’t even know I owned a mini bundt pan until about a month ago. I’m not 100% sure where I got it, but my money’s on it being a freebie from my friend Scratchy’s days at the Martha Stewart show. And what a way to christen them.
There’s everything I needed. Dave and the kids bought me that juicer on the side, thank goodness; that little piece of plastic makes a huge difference.
Dry ingredients first, nothing more complicated than all purpose flour, baking soda, and salt.
Then I creamed the butter & sugar together in my stand mixer. I toyed with the idea of replacing half the butter with yogurt, but since the recipe already had yogurt in it, I decided to just deal with it, and just vow not to eat all of them by myself.
I looked a little farther ahead in the recipe and realized I didn’t have my zest or my juice ready! It took six of those little Meyer lemons to get a tablespoon and a half of zest. The juice needed, a quarter of a cup, was a breeze now that I had an alternative to squeezing each one by hand and feeling it seep into any little nicks & cuts I had on my hands.
Then I beat in the eggs, added the zest & juice, and beat well.
For the next set of steps, I had to add in a third of the flour and half of the yogurt, and mix, then repeat, then finish off with the last of the flour. The challenge was making sure it was well incorporated without overmixing, a delicate balance indeed when I had to beat ingredients together no fewer than three times.
Last to go in was the vanilla. I hesitated, briefly; the recipe called for plain yogurt and I’d used vanilla. Should I scale back? I decided not to. I have a vanilla-loving family, and it was only half a teaspoon, so I threw my vanilla caution to the wind and added it in. And mixed.
I used the pictures in the original recipe to determine how much batter should go into each mini bundt cup (or “cavity” as the recipe says). She suggested using a cookie scoop but mine is very tiny, so I just grabbed a tablespoon and hoped for the best. I had some left over, so I scooped it all into a mini loaf pan.
I put both trays into the oven and then realized I hadn’t photographed the mini bundt pan. D’oh! I hastily removed it, snapped one quick shot, and popped it back in. I’d also forgotten to tap the pan to get rid of air bubbles, but be assured that it all turned out well in the end.
The recipe said to bake for 15-18 minutes or “until a toothpick inserted in several cakes comes out clean and cake edges are golden brown.” At 15, they seemed thoroughly done, with a little brown around the edges.
Now I loved this next instruction, and I’m going to use it for other baked goods too. Great, great idea. I put a sheet of parchment paper on a cooling rack, then flipped it and put it on top of the pan. Then, when I flipped the pan over, I had the cakes cooling on the rack BUT sitting nicely on top of the paper, where they wouldn’t pick up all those rack lines as they were still finalizing their shape. So smart.
Once they’d completely cooled, I dusted them with a little powdered sugar. Juliet asked for one, and as you know if you’ve read more of my blog, she’s the fussiest person in our house, if not the whole neighborhood. As I was taking some extra photographs of the cakes, she told me that if she liked them, she’d get into the picture, and if she didn’t, she wouldn’t.
She liked. Dave didn’t taste one until hours later, and then stopped me from putting the rest away so he could stock up. They really are just delightful. Zingy but sweet little bites of light lemon cake that linger on the palate. Yum.
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