Happy Birthday, Chisai San ~ Lemon Cake for Shuchi

Happy Birthday Shuchi..... 'Chisai San' is what Surbhi n I would call Shuchi in college...... 'Chisai' in Japanese is 'Small' and 'San' is a polite suffix..... we studied Japanese n Shuchi excelled at German She makes up for it by wearing awesome heels... she carries herself with aplomb and poise... wish i could wear those without stumbling along....

Had made Chocolate Espresso Brownies for her Pre-birthday Celebrations. Birthday had to be something different..... had already done a chocolate recipe so did my first experiment of Lemon cake[Saw it at Deeba's as usual.... :)].... better called the 'Volcano Cake' as the bundt cake with the candle in the center look like an erupting Volcano....

Ingredients
Butter – ½ cup/100gms
Eggs – 3
Sugar – 1 ¼ cups
Flour – 1 ½ cups
Baking powder – 1 tsp
Baking Soda – ¼ tsp
Salt – ¼ tsp
Yogurt – 4 tbsp / thick
Cream – 2 tbsp / 25 % fat
Juice of 1 lemon
Rind of 2 lemons
Lemon Extract - 1 tsp
Orange Essence – 1 tsp
Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp

Syrup
Water – ¼ cup
Sugar – ½ cup
Lemon Juice of 2 lemons
Orange Extract – ½ tsp (optional)
Method:

Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Grease well and line bottom of 8” ring tin.(Tends to stick otherwise)
Sift the dry ingredients together. Keep aside.
Mix the yogurt + cream in a small bowl. Keep aside.
Beat the butter + sugar well until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs 1 by 1, scraping the sides down after each addition. [I beat the eggs separaely and fold them in at the end. gave the cake the extra spring n bounce]
Beat in the lemon rind + lemon extract + orange essence + vanilla essence + lemon juice.
On low speed, beat in the dry ingredients alternatively with yogurt and cream mix…in 3 goes. [I didn't beat it too much, just mixed it all gently]
If you like, you can mix a deeper yellow colour in 1/3 of the batter to get a marble effect. [This looks just amazing... :)]
Put the batter into the lined tin, alternating with the deeper coloured batter, if using, and level out.
Bake for approximately 60 mins, or till the tester comes out clean.
Cool in tin on rack for 10 mins, and then turn it out on rack.

While the cake is baking, heat the water + sugar + extract and make syrup.
Take off heat, and add the lemon juice. Taste, and increase the lemon if desired.
Should taste nice and tangy…like a concentrate.
Poke the cake gently with a skewer.
Pour the warm syrup over the hot cake.
Handle cake gently while warm, as it’s quite delicate.


This cake is a bit sticky in the sense that it's a bit labourious trying to get it out of the tin. Lining the tin with parchment paper is wiser than struggling to make the cake come out clean from the tin. The challange i discovered was in lining a bundt pan.... insane effort n time spent...

That's Gauri, Shuchi's baker cousin. He chocolate cake was just so yummy that I gobbled up a large portion all by myself in 1 go...... Didn't get to taste the Blueberry cheesecake, however if the chocolate cake was anything to go by, it must have been heavenly aswell. Gauri, We want more..... We want more..... We want more..... is the chant we raved on facebook... :)

The staff at 'Pebble Street' would have thought us to be to be completely crazy bunch of girls [Shuchi, Radhika, Gauri n I].... We were joined by Kartick (Gauri's hubby), who also liked the cake and thought us to be completely giggly bunch of girls going bananas and shooting lemons.... :)
We missed Kanika n Surbhi... wish they could also be around.....
Hope you have a great year ahead shuchi....

Verdict:
Shuchi's sms: hey! cake was a super hit... got wackoed in a matter of few minutes :))