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Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

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I have a thing for pound cake.  It’s genetic.  My mother and grandmother always made them.  Here’s the recipe for the family’s tried and true sour cream pound cake modified to include lemon and poppy seed.  One of the best things about pound cake is that you can bake it in a pretty bundt pan.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

  • 3 c. flour
  • 1/4 t baking soda
  • 1/8 t salt
  • 1 c. butter (softened)
  • 3 c. sugar
  • 2 t.vanilla
  • 6 eggs
  • 1 c. sour cream
  • 3 T lemon zest
  • 1 T lemon juice
  • 1/8 c. poppy seeds
  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  2. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.
  3. In another bowl cream sugar, butter and vanilla.
  4. Add eggs to butter mixture one at a time, beating well after each.  Mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients.
  5. Add sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice and poppy seeds and mix well.
  6. Pour into a greased and floured bundt pan, then tap the pan to break any air bubbles.  Bake for one hour and 15 minutes minutes, possibly longer (until the crust is deep golden brown and the cake pulls away from the pan).
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Gocco!

My husband gave me the ingenious little Gocco printer for Christmas and I’m ashamed to say that I just took it out of the box today.  I am intimidated by objects that require me to read instructions (particularly when they are in Japanese), but these great tutorials here and here got me through it and it turns out to be very simple.  I now understand this Gocco craze!  If you have not heard of these, they are basically mini silkscreen printers that burn the image and print it in a couple of simple steps.

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I worked on this with my five-year-old who brought home a Dr. Seuss-ish drawing from school of her name in cursive made into people.  The image needs to be in carbon to transfer to the screen, so I had her re-draw it with the carbon pen provided.  Lost some of the detail of her original drawing as you can see below, but still great.  I guess I could have traced the original.  You can also scan in or create an image on the computer and (from what I gather) print with a laser printer or make a photocopy. 

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Anyway, all you do is make a screen of the original, ink it and print away.  I look forward to trying some designs of my own and want to try multiple colors.  Good-ness over at Etsy has a good price on the basic set. 

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Ottoman Schmottoman

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I hate this ottoman.  I am in a period of crafrustration where none of my projects come out right, which is one reason that I’ve not posted the past few days.  For this project, I used a cheaper blend version of sari fabrics, as silk obviously would not work for a project like this and would be too expensive.  Still, the fabric was slippery and had to be backed with fusible webbing.  Here’s the before and after shot of the ottoman, so I suppose it’s an improvement:

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But in a house with two small children this is not the best fabric choice and it came out a bit sloppy.  You should see the matching chair that I energetically ripped apart but have now decided that I am not capable of recovering.  Oops.   At least I bought upholstery fabric for that project.  Do you ever start to hate something in your house so much that you must change it right away?  That’s how I felt about this chair and ottoman.  And I’ll probably feel compelled to change this again soon.  Persistence, right?

Enough of my complaining.  I still think that sari fabric would make some lovely pillows, and I like these colors.  I used the wrong side of the fabric as it had a little less sheen and more muted color tones. 

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