Our Daughter's Cake à la lavande - Lavender Pound Cake

Hello and happy summer! For once, this recipe is not my mom's!  Since I am really into baking these days,  I figured out that, since I am in France (yes vacation! for 2 1/2 months - too much right?),  I should use this time to bake. The weather in Normandy (one of the places I'm staying over the summer) has been sunny and really hot ;  and then rain, rain, rain!

With my grand-parents, my brother and some of my cousins,  we went to a Gospel concert organized in the village's church. After the concert, we had a "collation" for the artists. We helped out to make something for them, and it had to be a dessert. Good for me, I was up for it! My grandmother told me I should make a chocolate cake, but I thought it was too ordinary. I thought that maybe I could make a lavender cake. Since there is fresh lavender (and no chemicals on them!) in my grandmother's garden (yes lavender in Normandy!), I did not have to purchase any. 

It was a success - they all loved it! So I even made it again for a "goûter" (afternoon snack) and it got  eaten quickly! Hope you love it too! Bon Appétit!

For one pound cake

• 200g flour plus some of the mold
• 8g baking powder
• 2 ts organic lavender buds and some for decorating
• 100g butter + some of the mold
• 200g sugar
• 3 egs
• 125ml whole milk

For the lemon icing:

• 150 g powder sugar
• 10 g water (more or less depending on consistency). .
• 1 organic lemon

• Infuse lavender in milk (I generally do it while we eat or a few hours before baking the cake; the milk should really taste like lavender)
• Preheat oven to 360 F
• Soften butter in microwave oven - it has to be soft but not melted
• Mix sugar and butter together until white and double in volume.
• Add the eggs, one at a time
• Mix the flour and baking powder and add them to the sugar mixture
• Pour the milk (with lavender buds) and mix well with a spatula (my mom calls it the indispensable tool (outil indispensable) in a kitchens)
• Butter + flour the mold
• Pour the mixture in it and bake 40 -45 min
• Unmold the cake and let it cook on a rack 
• While it cools down, prepare the icing

• The icing has to be liquid enough to drip on the sides of the cake but solid enough to create an opaque layer.
• In a pot, mix water and powdered sugar
• Add a few drops of lemon and half of the lemon zest
• Pour on the cake when the cake is cool and decorate with lavender sprigs

Personal Comments

• You could use smaller individual molds - just adjust cooking time to 15 -20 min
• Make sure to use organic lavender as you don't want to eat pesticides!
• I use butter + flour even on a silicon mold
• The cake tastes better cold but you could eat it warm as well