High Altitude Lemon Poppy Seed Cake
A high altitude recipe for a petite lemon poppy seed cake, with lemon cream cheese buttercream.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar, divided
- 1 large lemon (1 tbsp fresh lemon zest + 1/4 cup lemon juice)
- ½ cup whole milk
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1 large egg white (save the extra yolk for another use)
- ⅓ cup full fat sour cream
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 ⅔ cups cake flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tbsp poppy seeds
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted (only if needed to get the lemon sugar to stick to the sides of the cake)
Buttercream
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- ½ cup vegetable shortening
- 4 oz (1/2 block) full fat cream cheese, cold
- 1 tsp lemon paste or lemon extract
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp meringue powder
- 1 tbsp corn starch
- ⅛ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line two 6-inch cake pans with circles of parchment paper in the bottoms of the pans, and spray the paper with non-stick spray. The baked cakes are sticky, and you should not skip this step of lining your pans with parchment paper.
- Measure the sugar into a large bowl, and zest the lemon over the sugar. Use your fingers to rub the lemon zest into the sugar to really infuse the lemon flavor.Remove 1/4 cup of the lemon sugar. You'll be using it later, to coat the edges of the baked cakes, if you decide to do the naked cake pictured in today's post.
- Now cut the lemon in half, and squeeze the juice into a liquid measuring cup. You'll need 1/4 cup of lemon juice, so if you don't get quite enough from the lemon, you can add some bottled lemon juice. Stir in the milk, and set aside for several minutes to let the milk curdle.
- To the lemon sugar add the lemon juice/milk mixture, egg, egg white, sour cream, oil and vanilla extract, and whisk until smooth.
- In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and poppy seeds. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and whisk until just combined.
- Divide the batter between the pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a cake tester in the center of the cakes comes out clean and the tops spring back when lightly touched. Set the pans on a wire rack, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and cool completely.
- Before assembling the cake, gently turn the cakes out of the pans and coat the edges in the remaining 1/4 cup lemon sugar. If the sugar doesn't stick, you can lightly brush the cake edges with the melted butter.Note: If you're completely frosting the cake with the buttercream, you should skip this step of coating the cake edges in lemon sugar.
Buttercream
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, shortening and cream cheese for 1-2 minutes on medium speed, until smooth. Add the lemon paste or extract.
- In a separate bowl, combine the powdered sugar, meringue powder, corn starch and salt. With the mixer on low, add the powdered sugar mixture. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 3-5 minutes, until light and fluffy, scraping the bowl down several times. Turn the speed down to "stir" and mix for 1 minute.
- Fit a piping bag with tip 8B, and fill with the buttercream.
- Place one of the cake layers, edges coated in the lemon sugar, on a cake pedestal or serving plate. Pipe the buttercream on top of the cake. Repeat with the second layer of cake.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
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