If you want an easy, fresh tasting dessert to serve, this is it. It’s a fresh twist on the normal lemon loaf. Just grab a lemon pound cake mix from the store and some rosemary.

 

I was hosting our Young’s Greenhouse herb workshop and wanted to include a dessert. My family absolutely loves lemon desserts. Due to some health issues, my husband cannot have chocolate anymore, a favorite of his. But he also loves lemon. So we have been making lots of lemon desserts. I thought I would try to take one of his desserts and add rosemary to it. My husband does not like rosemary in anything, so I was not expecting him to like it. He couldn’t stop eating it. I started with one sprague of rosemary, but the more I made it the more I added. We are up to 4 spragues of rosemary now. It is such a yummy twist to a lemon dessert.

 

Feel free to make a lemon loaf from scratch. But if you are in a time crunch, grab a box and make it easy on yourself.

What You Need

You will need a lemon pound cake mix, water, an egg, butter, and fresh rosemary. The amount of rosemary you will use depends on how much you like the taste of rosemary.

How To Make The Dip

I start by melting the butter. Always cut your butter so it melts faster and more evenly. You can melt it in the microwave but make sure to watch it. You don’t have to melt every piece. Once it is mostly melted, stir with a fork and the rest of it will melt.

Make sure your egg is room temperature so it doesn’t make the butter harden. Put the cake mix, water, egg, and melted butter into a bowl and hand mix. You don’t want to over mix the batter or it will not be moist. Sometimes the butter hardens a little and you have some clumps. As long as they are small it’s fine. The oven will melt them.

Next, you need to chop the rosemary. Make sure you strip the rosemary leaves off the stems.  You don’t want to eat the tough stems. Finely chop the rosemary leaves. If you leave them too big, they will not be soft enough when you eat the cake. People will complain about hard pieces of rosemary. Add it to the batter and stir just until it is mixed in.

Make sure to grease the pan well. You can use a loaf pan or a small cake pan for these, depending on if you want slices or squares. Either way they are easy to serve. Bake until the sides are lightly browned and the center is set. I always like to stick a toothpick in the center to make sure it is done. Don’t over cook or else you will have a dry lemon cake. A few dry pieces on that toothpick is just fine.

Once it is done, wait for it to completely cool before you add the icing. Most lemon pound cake mixes come with icing. Follow the recipe on the box to make it. If it didn’t come with one, you will need 1 cup confectionary sugar, 2-3 TLBS of milk or cream, and 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract.  If you don’t have lemon extract you can use vanilla. You don’t get as much of a lemon flavor but it’s still delicious.

Once the lemon pound cake is completely cooled, drizzle or spread the icing on the top.

Enjoy!!!

Click on the icon to download our Easy Rosemary Lemon Pound Cake Recipe