easy dessert

Often, Lindsey brings a cake to Sunday dinner, but sometimes, we make our own dessert. One recent Sunday, we looked at our available ingredients, grabbed a random cookbook, and settled on pudding cake.

Sounds good, right? Pudding is good, cake is good ... it's a no-brainer. Turns out, it's pretty easy, too.

One note: this cake will never get firm. Don't expect it to. We overcooked the heck out of this cake (didn't seem to hurt it) before finally looking online for a picture of pudding cake. Apparently, this dessert is supposed to be cakey on the top and gooey on the bottom.

One more note: we made this in a cake pan. The recipe gives the option of baking in custard cups or a cake pan. I think it would be prettier if you made individual custard cups because you wouldn't have to scoop the cake of the pan to serve.

Lemon Pudding Cake

(from the Church of the Incarnation's Episcopal Epicure cookbook)

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 Tbs butter

2 tsp lemon zest

3 eggs, separated

3 Tbs all-purpose flour

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 cup whole milk

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream the sugar, butter, and lemon zest together. Add 3 egg yolks and beat well. Add the flour, lemon juice, and milk, a little at a time, beating as you go.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold egg whites into the yolk mixture. It won't be smooth. In fact, it will look kind of gross.

Pour batter into buttered custard cups or 7-inch ovenproof dish. Put a larger pan in the oven. Place the cups or dish in the pan, and add water until the water level is halfway up the sides of the cups/dish.

Close the oven and bake until set. That's 30 minutes for cups and 45 minutes for the dish.

We served our with blueberries and whipped cream (well, Cool Whip). Raspberries would probably be good, too.