A few years ago now, we were at a Memorial Day BBQ at a neighbor’s, when one of the guests showed up with this wonderful lemon cake. The rest of us brought  various forms of strawberries, as they were gloriously in season. The resulting pairing of fresh strawberries with strawberry ice cream and lemon cake was a nice twist on the idea of strawberry shortcake.

It being strawberry season, I found myself making three batches of strawberry jam in the last week, which of one has already been consumed in its entirety (wait, there might be a spoonful or two left in the jar, but we’ll go ahead and call it done, yes?).  This also means there have been berries galore around the house that need to be eaten and so Saturday afternoon, while making a batch of jam, I remembered I had that lemon cake recipe and decided right there and then I needed to make it for dessert that night.

As there was jam cooking away on the stove, I was not in a position to run out to the store to pick up ingredients it turned out I was missing, so I improvised. I subbed greek yogurt for sour cream and rum for vanilla, both of which turned out just fine.  Turns out I was light on confectioners sugar as well, having just enough to make the glaze for the cake, so when I made the whipped cream, I drizzled maple syrup to take the place of both vanilla and confectioners sugar, which is an experiment that went right. I’ll definitely be doing that more often.

The cake is a lemony pound cake, good on its own, or absolutely spectacular with strawberries and whipped cream.  It’s also ridiculously easy – dump all the ingredients into a bowl and beat for three minutes.  I’m not sure where the recipe originates from, I got it from Rachel’s friend Elizabeth, so I call it Elizabeth’s Lemon Cake.

One last note – I like to use a bit of strawberry jam, particularly if it hasn’t set very well, in addition to fresh berries. Try it and see.