Nanny’s Southern Lemon Cheese Cake
According to my mama, a lemon dessert isn’t a good one unless it’s tart enough to “make you spit.” As funny as that sounds, I have to agree with her. Mouth puckering lemon desserts are growing on me in my old age. I used to opt for rich chocolate desserts but now I find myself craving lemon, blueberry and strawberry flavored sweets instead. So, this Easter holiday I wanted a fruity dessert to take to my mama’s for a family Easter lunch. My mom requested a lemon cheese cake that my Nanny used to make. It was a three layer white cake with a tart, glossy, sticky, yellow icing and it was one of my mom’s favorites so I decided on that for her and in memory of my Nanny who we miss so much, especially when we all get together for the holidays.
Nanny made her white cake from a box mix and though I have a rather cryptic old recipe card I found in Nanny’s recipe box labeled “lemon cheese”, there are only ingredients typed on it, no directions. Luckily, I found two different lemon cheese recipes in another of her cookbooks I found. Country Cakes by Bevelyn Blair was written and published in Columbus, GA in 1984. If you are familiar with Phenix City, AL, I’m sure you know that Columbus is literally “just over the river” from PC. Anyway, I was lucky to have run across the recipe and the ingredients looked remarkably similar to the crusty old recipe card Nanny had in her rooster box.
I opted out of the “easy” way that would call for a store bought cake mix and used the homemade cake recipe in the cookbook right above the lemon cheese filling I chose. Let me tell you, I was cussing like a sailor as I was trying to FOLD stiff egg whites into the cake batter base that was as heavy and dense as a cookie dough batter! It was awful. I murdered those nice, airy egg whites too. I just knew my cake layers would come out like bricks. Fortunately, though very dense, they were not hot bricks. I felt the texture was a little stodgy, as Paul Hollywood would say but more like a pound cake? My brother thought it delicious and compared it to a wedding cake. He said he could tell it was homemade and not a mix. That made me feel a little better. I think next time I may add fresh blueberries to the cake batter.
The lemon icing, the best part of the cake was really easy to make. You cook it in a double boiler and let it cool down a lot before icing your layers. The icing gets thicker as it cools. It is more like a very loose, sticky lemon curd in texture and color. It contains no cheese of any sort so I’m not sure why it was called lemon cheese cake at all? The only reasonable explanation is the bright yellow color of the icing could be considered cheese-ish in appearance. Maybe that’s why?
Let’s take a look at the old recipe card that came from Nanny’s rooster box and her vintage cakes cookbook where I found two additional recipes!
I chose to make the “Lemon Cheese Cake and Lemon Cheese Filling No.1” found on page 76. I should have taken more pictures of the process but I was way too busy cussing the batter and egg whites! I apologize and I will try to get more photos on my next vintage culinary adventure.
The icing was like liquid at first but when it coats the back of a spoon like a hot jelly, it’s ready to cool down. I poured it onto my layers and spread it to the edges with the back of a spoon. Super easy!
It turned out just like my Nanny’s icing. The homemade cake was good but frustrating to mix. I’ll probably do the semi-homemade version my Nanny used next time. Betty Crocker and I will mix up a nice, moist white cake straight out of the box! GASP! Don’t tell anyone!
Did your grandmother, mother or other relative have a signature cake that you can remember? I’d love to hear about it! Let me know in the comments! Till next time, TOODLES!
