Meyer Lemon Crumb Cake

Get your summer in a cake, right here. With tangy crumbs, citrus-spiked icing, and streusel so buttery it's evocative of pie crust, there's an element to please every dessert eater. Meyer lemons forego the wincing tartness of their regular counterparts, so they're milder, but still inject a refreshing, sour-sweet shot. The cake itself has three parts and one quirk. You've got the batter, streusel, and icing. Then you've got the lemons, which undergo a quick boil and some time to rest before they're layered straight onto the cake. (The original recipe says to leave the skins on, but after test-tasting one and finding it required too vigorous a chew, I opted for removing them.) 

I made the cake to round out a Fourth of July dinner with my relatives. We supped on caprese stacks and shaved asparagus salad before clearing our big plates and replacing them with the little frilly-edged paper ones that signal dessert (always ice cream, along with any accompaniment I contribute) is at hand. It was the sort of dinner that spanned a veritable range of topics, from the FIFA World Cup to neighborhood news, to The New Yorker recommended reads, where you get the sense that everyone left the table having said a little bit of what they wanted to say, and having learned a little bit of something new. They also left the table with plates quite clean, save for the crumbs of a graciously devoured cake. 

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake
Meyer Lemon Crumb Cake
Ingredients:
For Struesel:
1 3/4 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold.

For Cake:
5 Meyer lemons, cut into thin slices and ends discarded
2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
zest from 5 Meyer lemons
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream (you can substitute yogurt or buttermilk if you like)

For Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar
juice from 5 Meyer lemons

Directions:
--Make streusel. Mix together dry ingredients. Cut butter into small chunks and stir into flour mixture, using a pastry cutter, two knives, or your fingers to mix in the butter. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
--Fill a medium saucepan a third of the way with water and bring to a simmer. Cook the lemon slices in simmering water for one minute. Drain the water, re-fill the pan, and repeat. Arrange lemons in a single layer on parchment or waxed lined sheet. When cool enough to touch, remove lemon flesh from the rind.
--Make the batter. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9-inch bundt pan. Mix together flour, powder, soda, and salt. In a medium bowl, cream together butter, sugar, zest, and vanilla. Once well incorporated, add eggs one at a time. Add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the sour cream.
--Pour half the batter into the prepared pan, and layer on half the lemons. Spread the rest of the batter in the pan, topping with remaining lemons. Sprinkle with streusel, using your fingers to pinch some of the mixture into big clumps. Bake 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the cake's center comes out clean.
--While the cake cools, make the icing. Sift powdered sugar over a bowl filled with the lemon juice and stir; icing should be fairly runny. When the cake has cooled for at least 10 minutes, pour on the icing.