Day 101: Leftovers, and Lemon Poppyseed Whipped Cream Pound Cake
Today was a Snow Day of the best kind; we woke up to huge clumps of snow accumulating as a record-breaking snowfall that slowed everyone down almost to a halt. My morning meeting was cancelled. I took it as a sign (or really, more of an excuse) to lounge around all day, something I haven’t even been doing on the weekends for a very long time. I suppose it wasn’t so much lounging as puttering, doing laundry, cleaning up my blog and photo files, answering emails and playing and reading books with W. All the stars fell into alignment: there were two full Tim Horton’s coffees in the fridge, some leftover shortcakes for breakfast with the last of the vanilla-cherry jam my friend S brought back from New Zealand, and the latest issue of Cooking Light arrived in the mail. The cherry on top: the first new episode (in ages) of The Office is on tonight!
And because there are so many leftovers from last night, I didn’t even need to cook.
I said I didn’t need to. I am hard wired to want to bake on days when it feels like Sunday and the snow is a foot deep. Besides, the leftovers included a bowl of whipped cream, a dangerous thing to have snowed in with me. I remembered a recipe for whipped cream pound cake in Richard Sax’s Classic Home Desserts, and looked it up, wondering if it would make a suitable poppyseed cake. (My friend A mentioned how much she loves poppyseed cake a few weeks ago after seeing it on the dessert menu at the Highwood, and when I stumbled upon a bag of poppyseeds in the depths of my cupboard last week I pulled it out thinking I’d make one for her.) It seemed strange to me that a cake made with only 2 cups of flour would call for two loaf pans or a 10″ tube pan, so I did my own thing with it, cutting out a third of the sugar while I was at it, and it worked out beautifully.
Whipped cream cake sounds outrageously rich, but this pound cake contains no butter. (Or shortening, or oil.) Because cream is 35% butterfat, in this case it’s a lower fat option, providing this cake with half the fat of other pound cakes.
Lemon Poppyseed Whipped Cream Pound Cake
1 cup whipping cream, chilled
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
grated zest of a lemon or two
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup poppyseedsPreheat the oven to 350F.
With an electric mixer, whip the cream until stiff; set aside. In a large bowl, beat the eggs for a minute, then slowly add the sugar, beating until the mixture is thick and pale yellow. Beat in the vanilla and lemon zest.
In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Sprinkle half over the beaten eggs and fold it in with a spatula; then fold in the whipped cream and then the remaining flour, along with the poppyseeds.
Spread into an 8″x4″ loaf pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray, and bake for 45-50 minutes, until golden and the top is springy to the touch.
April 10 2008 | cake | 6 Comments »
