Recipe Testing

One of the reasons I blog is because I love to try new recipes. This recipe and blog post is proof that not all recipes are written well and a small mistake on the bakers part can cause disaster!!!! Today I decided to try the cover recipe that is on the February 2014 Southern Living! Here it is:

Here is mine:

Now I am a pretty experienced baker!!! So what happened!?!? I will get to that after I tell you about the recipe. I still feel it is a great recipe!!!! It has been around for a long time. They named it lemon lime pound cake but in another cookbook I have it is called 7 UP Pound Cake!!! 

So let's just get to it!!! First you are going to cream 3 sticks of butter in your stand mixer:

Then measure out 3 cups of sugar:

And add gradually all 3 cups to the butter  and cream the mixture for 5 minutes.

This is where I noticed the first problem! The sugar didn't cream into the butter smoothly, it was still gritty. Problem: butter was soft enough when I started.

Next you will add five eggs one at at time.

Then it's time for the lemon. Once the eggs are incorporated you will add the zest of one lemon, 1 teaspoon of lemon extract and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Now for the dry ingredients. Measure 3 cups of AP flour into a bowl. And measure out 1 cup of 7 UP.

You are going to add 1 cup of flour and then 1/2 cup of the 7 UP. Till both mixtures are gone. Starting and ending with the flour. Mix just enough to combine after each addition!

Then flour and grease your pan. My cake stuck but I can't for the life of my figure out why because I have perfected my pan skills or so I thought.

Add your batter and bake at 350 for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Cover with foil after 50.

Remove from the oven and cool in pan for 15 minutes then turn out onto a cake plate. And this is what I got.

Epic fail. Now as a blog writer this is the point where I normally say "Nope, not posting this!!!" But tonight I thought this is a great example of how all recipes don't work out for everyone!!!! So I said whatever and made the glaze anyway.

2 cups powdered sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice and 1 tablespoon lime juice. Mix until smooth.

Then pour over cake. The glaze was a great consistency.  Not to thick not to thin but it ran off the cake like nobody's business! And the cake was cool not even warm!!! And here is the finished product!

20 minutes are adding the glaze it has all ran off! So maybe my cake wasn't all the way cool! Who knows! But the cake tastes amazing! So maybe we will try again another day!!! 

I really considered notifying the Test Kitchen at Southern Living about the issues but I want to try again before I do that!! The point of my Epic Fail Pound Cake is that you should try try try again!!

Enjoy

B