Key Lime Pound Cake

I love pound cake.  I love everything about it.  So, I'm always game to try different types of pound cake.  I've had the idea of a key lime pound cake stuck in my head for a few weeks so I went to the internet in pursuit of a proper recipe.  The internet never lets you down, right??  Wrong!  I only found 2 lime pound cake recipes and I really wasn't comfortable with either of them.  However, in my search through some of my current food blogger reads I stumbled upon a new site - Smitten Kitchen - and pretty much fell in love.  I spent several good hours that day reading back through Deb's posts and, with the help of some email correspondence, finally settled on a recipe for Lemon Pound Cake with the substitution of key limes for lemons.

The final product turned out impossibly delicate and quite tart but still very good.  While I don't think it quite beats my aunt's recipe for Cream Cheese Pound Cake (which will make an appearance here in the near future, I'm sure), it's certainly a light, summery option worthy of a special occasion.

Some additional notes on this recipe - it's long and quite involved.  If I were to do this over again, I would probably use lemons (per the original recipe) because the key limes were extremely time consuming the zest and juice.  I think I'll save them for key lime pie (yumm..).  Additionally, I would probably forgo the citrus syrup and just glaze the finished cake.  While I felt like it brought tartness to the party, it didn't add much in the way of moisture (though this could possibly because I didn't get enough of it to soak in).  I realized after the fact that I used table salt rather than the kosher salt called for in this recipe and while I didn't notice a different - use kosher salt if you have it.  There is a pretty significant different in volume between the two. 

Key Lime Pound Cake 

adapted from Smitten Kitchen
 
Cake Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature*
1/3 cup grated key lime zest

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup freshly squeezed key lime juice
3/4 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Syrup Ingredients:

1/2 cup freshly squeezed key lime juice

1/2 cup sugar

Glaze Ingredients:
3 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed key lime juice

2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Directions:
1.  Heat over to 350 degrees and grease/flour/parchment paper (whatever floats your boat) your pan.  This recipe yields enough batter for one bundt can or 2 loaf pans - but I made 1 mini loaf pan and about 20 cupcakes.  Yeah, I'm weird. 

2.  Cream the butter and sugar together.  It will take about 5 minutes for this to combine and fluff up properly.  Add the eggs, one at a time.  Add the lime zest.

3.  Sift together the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

4.  Combine 1/4 cup of lime juice with the buttermilk and the vanilla.

5.  Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.

6.  Pour (or divide) into your prepared pans and bake - 45 minutes to 1 hour for a bundt pan, 35-45 minutes for loaf pans, etc.  Just watch the cake and pull when a cake tester** comes out clean.  From my experience with this cake, it did NOT brown at all even when the cake was done on the inside.  It was still very blonde in color and very delicate.

7.  Combine the  glaze ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves.  Do this about 10 minutes before you plan to pull the cake.

8.  Pull the cake from the oven and carefully remove it from the pan to a cooling rack.  If you're worried about it not coming out cleanly, wait a few minutes for it to cool down (better the cake not soak up as much of the glaze than it fall apart!).  Perforate the top all over with a toothpick and carefully spoon the warm syrup over top of the cake, allowing as much as possible to soak in.  Cool completely.

9.  Combine the glaze ingredients and pour over the cooled cake.  Enjoy! 

*Ahh, the great egg debate.  The original recipe called for 4 extra large eggs.  I did not have extra large eggs.  I had large eggs!  From the (admittedly minimal) research I've done, it seems that you can replace extra large eggs with large eggs on a 1 to 1 ratio up to about 5-6 eggs.  After that, you probably need to add in an extra egg.  

**Fancy sounding name.  My cake tester?  Either a toothpick or a knife.