Babka's Lemon Cake

This is not going to be one of those sweet posts about some sweet old lady her sweet cake recipe that she so sweetly gave to me at her sweet house when I was just a sweet child.

Got it?

Sweet.

Instead this is about how I attempted to make a traditional Polish cake.

Well kinda... You see I have no Babka (that's polish for grandma). The closest thing I have to a Polish grandma is an 1/8 Norwegian grandma and that's not close at all.

Despite my lack of... Polishness? Polishiosity? Poligarchy? Essence-of-Poland? Anyway, although I am in no way Polish, I have a Polish last name and a Polish-looking husband. Somehow that creates in me the desire to do something, well, Polish.

When I got the itch to bake today, I asked dear, sweet, Polish-looking J what he might want. He said lemon cake. I'm not, in general, a huge fan of lemon dessert, but it sounded fun to make. When I ran across this recipe on Pinterest, I knew it would be my afternoon project.

In order to save money I adapted some ingredients to fit what I have.

First, I went with only all-purpose flour not potato or "plain" flour. (What is "plain" flour anyway?)

Second, I subbed in blueberries for raisins, because I can't stand raisins in dessert.

From there I just followed the directions as listed. It's pretty simple, until you get to the baking part.

On the recipe he says put the batter "in your tin." Maybe it's just me, but this was very ambiguous.

What is a tin exactly? Based on the picture of the final product I decided a bundt pan was the best bet.

How big is it? I only have one bundt pan, so this was kind of an irrelevant question.

Is it greased? I decided it was not because he said nothing about it, and the batter had 9 T. of Olive oil.

The cake is in the oven as we speak  I type. So I'll let you know later if these were good decisions or not. Maybe there'll be pictures as well. :)

Pictures indeed...

Update:

The cake was a little difficult to get out of the pan in one piece. However, I still don't think it needed to be greased. Instead I think a smaller pan (or more batter) would solve the problem.

You see, the cake I made is only about 2 inches tall. This is my first Babka cake, but I don't think that's how they're supposed to look.

Another problem--it's  a little dry. My oven cooks a little cool so I bumped it up about 20 degrees. This was too much for the midget cake apparently.

In sum, the cake tastes great, but next time I would double the recipe to make a bigger, moister cake.