Key Lime and Cardamom Cake

I have been scrutinizing cake recipes that use lavender and cardamom for a while now but couldn't find one that I wanted to bake; not because they didn't look good, but because my family is not big on cake. I had visions of a fancy cake sitting sad and neglected on a counter with only a tasting slice taken out of it. Today's recipe, using lemon and cardamom, sounded good and it sounded like something that would tempt the guys. I'll have to find a recipe to utilize the lavender later.

Today's cast--I had a bag of key limes so decided to sub them for the lemon.

Before I did anything else, I prepped the cardamom and the limes. The cardamom pods went into the mortar. Seeds were removed...

Then ground into a powder.

I had 10 pods and they just made about a teaspoon of ground spice. All the dry ingredients were in a bowl. I added the cardamom to that.

Next I zested the limes. A great tool for this purpose is a zester or microplaner. It's basically a very fine grater.

You need to make sure you don't get any of the white pith--it's bitter. So, keep moving the lime around as you go.

It took quite a few limes to get the required tablespoon and a half! I love the smell of limes.

Now it was time to remove the juice. A small, fine-meshed sieve is super-helpful here!

The limes are very small and hard so just squeezing them is challenging--especially if you have tendonitis! My technique is to use the back of a spoon to break up the membranes. Once that happens, most of the juice will escape and then it's easier to squeeze the lime to get out any that is left.

I didn't have yogurt so I subbed sour cream. The milk and vanilla were added to it.

The lime juice was added to the sour cream mixture and stirred till smooth.

Butter and sugar were creamed together.

Then the eggs and zest.

The dry ingredients and sour cream mixture were added alternately until a nice smooth batter formed.

It smelled really good!

I greased a loaf pan and placed a piece of parchment on the bottom. The thing I neglected to do was to lightly flour the pan after that. I didn't realize that till later!

The cake went in for 45 minutes but I left it in for an additional 4. The recipe said it would be light in color.

While I waited for the cake to cool, I juiced more limes and mixed with powdered sugar. Technically it should have been thicker and more glaze-like but I wanted the tartness of the limes to shine so I left it runny.

Now, almost as soon as I took it from the oven, I noticed that the cake was settling. Half an hour later and it had gotten rather compacted. Hmmm. I drizzled it with the sauce anyway.

The cut slice shows how much the cake collapsed in on itself. There is also a slightly underdone section on the very bottom. So even though the toothpick came out clean, a few more minutes would not have gone amiss. In addition, my neglecting to flour the pan may have led to the flattening. It was disheartening but I served it up to the guys anyway.

And it was very delicious. Not airy, of course, but kind of like a pound cake. It was very citrusy, which we all liked, and the cardamom was a whisper on the back end. Both Eric and Tom took seconds immediately. I took an additional bit, too. Chris said he really liked it, but he has the best self-control of the bunch, so...

I definitely want to make this again. Next time I will add a bit more cardamom, use lemons (as the recipe intended) and flour the darn pan!

Here's the promised link:

Lemon Cardamom Cake

Recommended equipment:

Microplane