Summertime Dessert Series: Lemon-Lime Sponge Cake with Lime Seven Minute Frosting

Ah, summer.  I just love summertime desserts.  They are cool and refreshing and a great way to forget about the heat.  At least for a little while.  And here in the California Bay Area, have we ever got some summer heat!  After a cold and rainy Spring, Summer has come on and brought us temperatures in the 90s and 100s. Perfect weather for a nice, cool dessert.  I'm going to try to post a cool summertime dessert every week and this week I'm starting with this Lemon-Lime Sponge cake with cool lime Seven Minute Frosting.

I started with a recipe for a daffodil cake from the now out of print Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. It's a hand me down from my mom, and one of my favorites.  There is a color picture index with a picture for EVERY recipe.  Some of the recipes are a little outdated (Eggs En Gelee or Fish Mousse, anyone?)  But there are some great classic recipes and it's one of the first places I usually look.

So, the Daffodil cake recipe is an orange lemon flavored cake, topped with an orange lemon icing.  I decided to go a different way with the cake and made a lemon lime sponge cake and topped it with seven minute frosting, one of my favorites, a fluffy cooked frosting.

Lemon-Lime Sponge Cake

1 1/4 cup egg whites

1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp vanilla extract (instead of extract here, I scraped one vanilla bean)

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup cake flour

4 egg yolks

2 tsp lemon zest

2 tsp lime zest

If you look REALLY closely here, you can see the vanilla bean flecks

Preheat oven to 375F.  In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat egg whites, cream of tartar, vanilla and salt on high speed until soft peaks form.   Sprinkle in sugar, two tablespoons at a time, while continuing to beat at high speed, until sugar dissolves and stiff glossy peaks form.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add flour gradually, beating until just blended.  

In a separate bowl, beat yolks at high speed until thick and lemon colored.  Fold in half of the egg white mixture, along with the lemon and lime zest.  Drop alternating spoonfuls into a 10 inch tube pan.  Bake 35-40 minutes.

After removing fro the oven, invert cake and cool in pan for 1 hour. Placing it upside down on a wine or beer bottle works well for this.  While the cake cools, it's time to move on to the frosting.

I've seen several recipes for seven minute frosting, but this is the one that I used for this cake.  It is from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book, another of my favorite cookbooks.  "Seven Minute" is a misnomer, though, as it takes a bit longer to make.

Lime Seven Minute Frosting

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

pinch of salt

2 egg whites

1/4 cup cold water

2 tsp vanilla extract

zest and juice of 1 small lime

Combine all ingredients except vanilla in either a large, heat resistant mixing bowl, or the top of a large double boiler.  Set over simmering, but not boiling, water on low heat, making sure that  the bowl does not touch the water.

Beat with an electric beater until the frosting stands in peaks. This should take 5-7 minutes.  Remove from heat and continue to beat for a few more minutes, until frosting stiffens and stands in smooth, fluffy peaks.  Beat in vanilla, along with lime juice.  After frosting cake, sprinkle zest on top of cake.

I took this to a dinner at a friend's house and it got great reviews.  The hint of lemon and lime was perfect.


This post is linked at Sweets for a Saturday

Blueberry Vanilla Bean Jam

More blueberries and more jam!  I decided to take some of the beautiful blueberries that I got at Costco and make blueberry jam.  I really wanted to add something to jazz up the flavor a little, though.  I ended up scraping out an entire vanilla bean pod into the jam and it was just the flavor I was looking for.  This is another recipe that I got from my "In a Pickle or a Jam" cookbook, circa 1971.  Luckily, things like this are pretty timeless, with the exception of how the final product is sealed (like I mentioned in a previous post, most of the recipes call for sealing with paraffin wax.)

This was a small batch, since I am still learning about canning, I didn't want to use up all my blueberries, plus we still wanted some for things like snacks and blueberry pancakes.

Blueberry Vanilla Bean Jam
(yields 1 1/2 pints)


3 cups blueberries
1/2 lemon, juiced and zested
3 1/2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean

Prepare your jars.  I used 1 pint jar and 1 half pint jar.  I would have used all half pint jars, but I only had two lids left.

Combine blueberries, lemon zest and juice, and sugar in a stockpot. Heat very slowly over low heat, mashing blueberries with a potato masher or ricer.  Once mixture comes to a boil, add seeds from vanilla bean and mix in thoroughly.

Boil mixture rapidly until jam is set, mixing often.  I used my candy thermometer to keep track of the temperature and once it reached 220F, I started testing it using the cold plate method.  I had a plate in the freezer and put a little of the jam on it.  When the jam jelled up after being put on the plate, it was ready.  This took about 10 minutes for me.

Once it is ready, fill the prepared jars, wipe the rims, seal and process.

The vanilla added just the right flavor.  I plan to buy some more blueberries and double the recipe sometime soon.  I want to make sure I have enough of this one to last all winter!

And somehow, I must have been really involved because I neglected to take a single picture of the process on this one, until the jars were sealed and processed.