I had a serious craving on Friday night for a lemony cake. Not a pound cake, and not a full-on layer cake with frosting. I specifically wanted to make a lemon Bundt cake, and it took me a surprisingly long time to find a straightforward recipe for this. I found all kinds of bundts made with puddings or oozing with fillings, but I just wanted something plain and simple. Eventually I found a perfect recipe in the American’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I do love that book so. My only criticism is that I made the citrus glaze to go over the top of this cake, and it was a little bit of a tart overload to me. But that could be my own weird pregnant palette, or the fact that I slightly overmeasured the amount of lemon juice I used. Not a flaw of the recipe’s, just my own taste. A simple glaze would’ve been more delicious to me. But here are both recipes as I made them.

Lemon Bundt Cake

To coat the pan:
1 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour

For the cake:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking pwder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
4 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp finely grated lemon zest (from about 3 lemons)
3/4 cup buttermilk (I made my own with the lemon juice and milk trick)
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 large egg yolk at room temperature
18 Tbsp (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 cups sugar

For the glaze:
1 3/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice or orange juice
Pinch salt

Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. To coat the pan, mash the butter and flour together into a paste and then brush evenly over the inside of a 12-cup Bundt pan.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk the lemon juice, vanilla, lemon zest, and buttermilk together.

In a third bowl, whisk together the eggs and the egg yolk.

Beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3-6 minutes.

Beat in the eggs in 2 batches until incorporated, about 1 minute, scraping down the bowl and beaters as needed.

Reduce the mixer to low and slowly add in 1/3 of the flour mixture until just combined.

Add half of the buttermilk mixture.

Add another 1/3 of the flour mixture, then the remaining buttermilk mixture, then the remaining flour mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

Bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, 50-60 minutes. Do not overbake.

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack to cool completely, about 2 hours.

While the cake cools, make the glaze. Mix all the glaze ingredients together until smooth, then let sit until thickened, about 25 minutes.

Pour the glaze over the top of the cake after it has completely cooled (I jumped the gun on this, but we wanted cake!), allowing the glaze to drip down the sides.

Let set before serving, about 10 minutes (we didn’t wait for this step either, so we had a puddle of glaze at the bottom and did not care!).