East 62nd Street Lemon Cake

Found this recipe in the New York Times (the story behind it is interesting!), made it for Easter on a whim, and it turned out delicious! Not to mention, easy to throw together and looks really pretty!

Cake:
Butter or shortening and flour for greasing/dusting the bundt pan
3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tbsp. lemon zest

Glaze:
1/3 cup lemon juice (fresh squeezed)
3/4 cup sugar

Instructions:

Heat oven to 325 degrees (I did 350 because my oven has a hard time getting up to heat). Grease and flour 9-inch bundt pan.

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time. (I did this in our Bosch)

Fold in dry ingredients, alternating with milk, then stir in the lemon zest. (I just continued mixing in the Bosch). Pour batter into pan and smooth the top, then bake 1 hour 15 min or until cake tests done. (Mine was done at 65 minutes but that could have been because the oven was a little warmer?)

While the cake bakes, prep your sugar and lemon juice. Right when you pull the cake out of the oven, flip it onto a cooking rack with a sheet pan underneath to catch drippings. Then heat the lemon juice and sugar until sugar melts. Use a pastry brush to brush the lemon/sugar juice over the entire surface of the cake, make sure the cake is still hot. It will be a slow process as the cake slowly soaks up every layer of lemon sugar!

I refrigerated mine overnight and it served well the next day. Just try not to have anything touching the cake since it will kind of pull off the sticky crust when you remove the covering.