Happy Thursday! One more day til the weekend~~!
Well, I'm happy to let everyone know that the boiler-man came by this morning and fixed my heater! He had to replace the 'motor' cuz it was total crap and rusty. He opened the valve on the boiler and all this rusty water came out. ewww... Anyway, now that it's fixed, my floor is toasty warm, I can wash my dishes with hot water, I can take a shower... we're back in business! At least it was just my heater that was broken, and not, say, my internet . Heaven forbid. :)
Anyway, wanna know what I did yesterday to warm up the apartment and to keep the blood circulating? I turned on the oven and baked!
For some reason, for the past few months, I've been craving lemon pound cake. I can't even remember the last time I had it, but thoughts of dense, spongy, lemony, sugary-sweet pound cake have been haunting me! My mom used to make excellent lemon pound cake (non-vegan) when we were living in Ghana, and I think I've been wanting to relive those glorious childhood days. Well, there are plenty of vegan pound cake recipes online and I wasn't sure which one to go with, but then realized that there's actually one in Veganomicon! Didn't have to scour the internet afterall~
So after a little labor of love, here's the resulting pound of yumminess:
Ladies & Gentlemen, my very first vegan lemon pound cake.
The recipe's not mine so I won't post it here, but I'm sure you could find it with a quick Google search. :) As always, I made a few tweaks here and there. The original calls for vegan yogurt, but instead of that, I just used more tofu with about 1 Tbs of vinegar. Next, in place of the arrowroot powder, I used cornstarch. I also ran out of all-purpose flour and had to sub half of it with whole wheat, which resulted in a slightly darker-colored cake, but at least it was more nutritious. Oh, and lastly, I only made half the recipe, so that's why my pound cake looks so squat.
The recipe said that it would taste better after a few hours, so I actually waited all night before having a taste! I had to muster up every ounce of self-control not to cut myself a big fat slice right away, but in the end, I'm so glad I waited because otherwise, the first bite probably wouldn't have had the same intense effect on me as it did. I was blown away.
I know I have a bad habit of over-hyping everything, and calling everything "amazing," but really, this was just that. The lemon flavor was bright and intense, just the way I like it, and the crumb was dense yet soft. Perhaps mine wasn't as heavy as other pound cakes out there, but this one held its own. It definitely took me back to my childhood days!
Mmm~ lemon glaze icing!!
Seriously, does that not look positively delectable?!
The lemon icing also added an extra touch of sweetness. When it dried, it hardened to a thin sugar-glaze layer, that slightly cracked and then melted in your mouth. Yum. For the lemon icing, I just used about 1 Tbs of lemon juice, and then added sugar powder until I had the desired consistency (1 cup?).
I took this to Minju at Cafe Harunohee and after one bite, she looked at me with wide approving eyes, "wow, mashittda !" We packaged them up and put them out for sale. These slices are really small, but if people like 'em, perhaps we'll bump up the size and make them a regular item at the cafe. :)
I've actually been doing quite a bit of baking lately, but I just haven't had the chance to post em up here. I'll get round to that soon! But til then, enjoy these pictures, and go make your own!