I was positively ecstatic last month when I noticed a great feature in the online version of the Los Angeles Times food section. The Times was "opening the vault" of their recipe archives and publishing lists of the top ten recipes from each of the past 25 years. They started the countdown shortly before Christmas, beginning with recipes from 1985 and working forward. They've finally reached 2009, and you can see the entire 25 years worth of vault recipes here.I look forward to reading the LA Times food section every Wednesday and I've had great luck with almost every recipe I've tried from the paper. In fact, many of the recipes I've already featured on this blog are included on the vault list, including Milk's Ooey Gooey Cookies (2009), Midnight Chocolate Brownie Bites (2008), Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze (2007), and Keswick Hall Pistachio Madeleines (1999). So I eagerly looked through all of the vault recipes and amassed a collection of quite a few that I intend to try. To start with, I decided to try the Double-Lemon Cake (scroll down toward the bottom of the page for the recipe) from 2004. Like much of the country, we've been having a long, cold winter here in Washington, D.C. Lemon is such a sunny and bright flavor that I figured a lemon cake would be the perfect pick-me-up for a gray winter day.
This cake was not at all difficult to put together; the bulk of the preparation time for me was in zesting and juicing the lemons. The finished cake was very pretty and had a lovely and intense bright lemon flavor (there is lemon juice and zest in both the cake and the glaze). The crumb was firm and fairly dense, and my favorite part of the cake was the top crust, which had a great texture and the most lemon flavor (most of the glaze that was brushed on ended up concentrated at the top of the cake). This cake was a perfect little ray of sunshine for a cold winter's day. I can't wait to try out more recipes from the vault!Recipe: "Double Lemon Cake" from the Los Angeles Times Best of 2004.
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