80% Vegan (Vegetarian) - Lemon Cake with Almond

Another attempt on becoming a vegan or presumably, a vegetarian - still a long way ahead tho wkwk. So I have this one favorite patisserie nearby who has all of its cookies and cakes made with premium ingredients, to which I have known (if not all) most of them. They make the best lemon cake I've ever had. Again, this crazy pandemic had them close for months and I don't have any trustworthy lemon cake supplier. After craving for months, finally they re-opened and I bought a lot woohoo. In anticipation of another closing down period, I then tried to make one, and here it is another vegetarian cake:

Yes yes I know it's so oogly wkwk, I've never decorated an icing on cake before so I just heartlessly poured it and covered the top of the cake with it, because the icing is essential to the lemon cake. Taste-wise: surprisingly delish, not as delish as my fave patisserie's lemon cake but it's nearly the same! From this first lemon cake, I can conclude which part needs to be added and reduced, including the types of cake emulsion to be used as well as the bakeware Zzz. Another issue with the non-stick baking sheet is that it almost burnt the bottom part of my cake, luckily my instinct has been sharpened based on the previous bakeware issue with the cookies. I used it because this is the only baking sheet I have, with the shape of the lemon cake from my favorite patisserie. Well, I learned the hard way. In my 2nd attempt, I layered the baking sheet with 3 layers of baking parchment. Turned out, it went well as expected. The non-stick baking sheet did not burn the bottom part of the cake. IDK if this is a legit solution, but this additional layering might as well works for your non-stick bakeware.

We can find many ingredient references on the internet. What I'm about to highlight now is the lemon zest. When we zest the lemon, we must be careful not to grate the white part of the peel because it's freaking bitter - so make sure to grate the yellow portion only. I used a cheese grater so the lemon zest shall be "refined" and in the same form as a grated cheese. With this size of lemon cake, I only needed 2 imported lemons, that can cover both the lemon zest and the juice. We will need the lemon juice both for the batter and the icing. Another important thing to note is the choice of seeds/nuts. Since I don't have any poppy seeds available in the pantry, I took the initiative to use the sliced almonds (which is always ready for my brownies). Turned out, it doesn't really affect the taste, instead, the texture. Think I'd prefer not to use any nuts if I don't have the poppy seeds and have the lemon cake as it is.

Not-So-Disclaimer: all pastry, cookies and cakes I made are 100% hand-whisk so the texture might slightly different.

This is how my lemon cake looks like after sit for hours. Oogly, but still firm and tasty. IDK how to express this but trying to be "positive", I will quote Dr Pangloss' philosophy in Voltaire's masterpiece "Candide": all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Why Candide? because it's a satire - indeed towards Pangloss' philosophy LOL.

Happy eating and baking, hope I can be truly positive without any idiosyncrasy. But seriously, this lemon cake is so good and it freshened up my kitchen.