Archive for: lemonade
This cheerful Pink Lemonade Cake would be the perfect centerpiece for a springtime party. It’s bright pink color is eye-catching and the cake pops with lemon flavor – just like the drink it is named after. This is a chiffon cake, which is a fluffy, moist cake that is primarily leavened with meringue, much like angel food cake. The cake uses both fresh lemon juice and zest to give it a strong lemonade flavor, and it is topped with a drizzle of lemon glaze that makes the flavor stand out even more.
The main flavor in this cake is lemon, as is the main flavor in a glass of pink lemonade. Pink lemonade is regular lemonade that has been dyed pink using either food coloring or a small splash of a reddish fruit juice, such as strawberry, cherry or cranberry. The origins of pink lemonade are unclear, but almost every origin story claims that the color was added to regular lemonade by accident, and that the perky pink kept customers coming back for more. This cake also just has a splash of red added just to give it a pink color, not necessarily to add flavor. You can use a few drops of red food coloring, an “all natural red food coloring” or even a few teaspoons of all natural grenadine (a bar syrup made from pomegranates, although there are many versions that are little more than food coloring and corn syrup). Use restraint with the food coloring, since you want this cake to be pink and not red.
The inspiration for this cake came from a Pink Lemonade Cake printed in a recent issue of Cook’s Country. It looked beautiful and, since I love lemon, I tried it soon after getting the magazine. Unfortunately, it had very little lemon flavor and the cream cheese frosting nearly overwhelmed the tender cake, although it looked very pretty. I still loved the color, but used some of my favorite citrus chiffon cake recipes (Lime and Strawberry Lemonade) to boost the flavor considerably to make this cake a whole lot more lemony.
Chiffon cakes typically keep very well and this cake is no exception. It will stay moist and fresh for many days when stored in an airtight container, so it can easily be made a day or two in advance of when you want to serve it.
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Strawberry lemonade is one of my favorite summertime drinks and this is that drink in cake form – or at least, as close as you’re going to come to the lemony drink and still be able to eat it with a fork! The base of this cake is a lemon chiffon cake, with a bright and zesty lemon flavor that goes well with layers of strawberry filling. The cake is light and moist, making it a good choice for the summertime when you don’t want a very dense or heavy cake to weigh you down. The fact that it is so moist also means that it actually leaves you feeling a little bit refreshed after eating a slice – just like you would after sipping a glass of cold lemonade!
The cake is a typical chiffon cake, a foam cake that gets most of its leavening from beaten egg whites, much like an angel food cake. It gets some extra moisture from the inclusion of egg whites and a small amount of vegetable oil, and ends up being much less cottony than an angel food cake and much lighter than your average butter cake. Chiffon cakes are usually baked in tube pans, as are angel food cakes, but this recipe is baked in 9-inch round cake pans. The light foam cakes may sink slightly as they cool, but that just serves to even out the cake layers and makes them easier to slice when you’re ready to stack them up. Most of the lemon flavor in this cake comes from freshly squeezed lemon juice, so don’t be tempted to use bottled juice if you want the best finished product.
The strawberry portion of this cake comes in the form of strawberry jam, which is spread between the layers of the cake. The jam is sweet enough that even just a thin layer will give the cake a nice strawberry flavor and a very pretty finished look. Choose a good quality strawberry preserve for making this cake, as that will give you the best finished product. I garnished the top of my cake with lots of fresh, sliced strawberries. If you would rather use raspberry jam or some other berry preserve, garnish your cake with berries to match.
yum! very moist, tender and very light.
I frosted this cake with a light cream cheese frosting, which adds some sweetness and a nice creamy finish to the cake. I only flavored mine with vanilla extract, though you can easily beat in a little extra lemon zest to add another lemon element to the cake.
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Yogurt can be a great ingredient in popsicles because it can help build a creamy base for a pop. Popsicles made with juice alone tend to be a little on the icy side and the yogurt mitigates that, giving the treat a much smoother melt and richer mouthfeel. Still, a popsicle should be refreshing (or you’d just have ice cream, right?), so I used fresh lemon juice to give a lemonade zip to these popsicles.
The popsicle mixture has just lemon juice, sugar and plain yogurt. Vanilla yogurt will work, too,. Regardless of which flavor yogurt you wish to work with, I recommend using a low fat version over a nonfat because the consistency will be slightly better. It won’t be bad with the nonfat, but it might be a tiny bit icier to bite into (the melt is still pretty good, though). I basically just heated the lemon juice, dissolved the sugar in it and then mixed the strong “lemonade” into the yogurt before freezing. The pops are zesty and refreshing, with a slight yogurt tang that goes well with the lemon. Lime also works well in these.
My popsicle molds hold just about 3-oz each. It may vary widely by shape and manufacturer. I used Tovolo Rocket Pop Molds, which I like because of their fantastic shape and good overall design. So, in light of sizing differences, be aware that you might need a bit more or a bit less of the yogurt mixture to make your popsicles.
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Limeade isn’t nearly as common as lemonade, but everyone I know that is a fan of the lemon juice drink is at least as appreciative of limeade, if not moreso. The drinks are virtually the same – lemon/lime juice, sugar, water and ice – but limeade is a bit brighter and tangier than lemonade. It often tastes less sweet than lemonade, even with the same amount of sugar put in as a sweetener. For me, this makes it even more refreshing. It is perfect for cutting through rich or spicy foods.
Just as with lemonade, limeade is best when you start out with fresh limes. Real lime juice gives the drink a fresher flavor than prebottled does. If you’re going to try prebottled lime juice, you may as well just start out with a whole bottle of limeade and save some time (Simply Limeade is one of my favorites, if you are looking for a good bottled brand). Once you have your juice, you only need to stir in some sugar and dilute the mixture with water before chilling and drinking. I usually make a simply sugar syrup for lemonade, and I do pretty much the same thing for limeade, heating some of the water used just enough to dissolve all the granulated sugar. Sugar should be adjusted to taste, of course.
Limeade is great on its own, but can also be a good mixer for margaritas and other cocktails. It’s summery, but there is no reason that limeade can’t be enjoyed all year round as long as you can find juicy limes to start with.
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Arnold Palmer is a golfer, widely considered to be one of the best golfers in history, in fact. Arnold Palmer is also a drink and, as this is a food blog and not a sports one, it’s also the one that I’m talking about today.
The drink is a mixture of half iced tea and half lemonade and for many – including Arnold Palmer and me (usually) – it’s greater than the sum of its parts. It has the refreshing, bright citrus flavor of lemons and the mellowness of iced tea. I find Arnold Palmers to be less sweet and more refreshing than lemonade alone, since many lemonades are overly sugary and don’t really cool you down. They’re certainly more interesting than iced tea alone, especially if you tend to drink plain black tea.
I used homemade lemonade and homemade iced tea for this batch, and sweetened it with simple syrup. If I had sweetened both my lemonade and my iced tea in advance, I probably wouldn’t have needed extra sweetener, but I usually keep my iced tea unsweetened. Simple syrup is always my preferred sweetener for cold drinks. It’s basically sugar dissolved in water and reduced until slightly syrupy. You’ll never end up with grains of sugar floating around your drink if you use it. Use a strong iced tea so that the flavors come through. If your iced tea is only of average strength, don’t add ice to the drink to chill it because it will water down the flavors too much.
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