A Feast of Ice and Fire: Modern Lemon Cakes

“Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa was so stuffed that she could not manage more than two little lemon cakes, as much as she loved them.” – A Game of Thrones

The medieval lemon cakes are delicious and I’ve actually made them a few times, so I was excited to try this version out too!

First the cake itself is made like most cakes – dry ingredients are mixed in one bowl and the wet in another (excluding milk). The dry ingredients and milk are added to the wet ingredients in batches until it’s completely combined. This is poured into a baking pan and baked until light gold.

The cake is then cooled before being put in the fridge. Chilling the cake makes it easier to cut into cubes. They way I cut mine ended up more like tall rectangles than cubes, but at least they stood up on their own!

For the icing, the confectioner’s sugar and lemon juice are cooked together in a double boiler before butter and, if you’d like, yellow food coloring are added. This is then poured over top of the little cakes so it drips down the sides.

If you’d like, you can also garnish with one of the cookbook’s suggestions (pomegranate seeds, candied orange peel, or decorative sprinkles).

Taste: 10/10

These were just as good as the medieval ones! The difference is this is definitely a cake vs. the medieval ones being almost cookie-like. The cake is light and fluffy, and there’s the perfect amount of lemon mixed into these.

Difficulty: Average

The cake isn’t very challenging, but I did try to make these once before and the batter was too liquidy and never cooked properly. I think the lemon I used had too much juice that time, since the recipe is vague about the exact measurement (says “juice from 1/2 lemon”).

The icing also isn’t tough, but does need to be made in a double boiler and I found there wasn’t quite enough to be able to drip down each of the cakes.

Cost: Cheap

You will need flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, lemons, milk, and confectioner’s sugar. Other optional additions include yellow food coloring and toppings (candied orange peel, pomegranate seeds and/or decorative sprinkles).