Traditionally, a pound cake comprises a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. By that definition, this cake is a half-a-pound cake. Sort of.

By contemporary baking standards, pound cakes call for those same four ingredients in equal quantities by weight. So again this cake is a pretender: It comes in at a half-pound each of eggs and butter but misses the half-pound mark for sugar by an ounce (less sugar is a good thing, though, right?) and for flour by a little more.

Never mind. I’m still calling it a pound cake. Sue me.

But taste it first.

Annie Iwashi wrote for such a recipe: "I have been searching for a recipe for a lemon-flavored pound cake that has been tested and found to be delicious!"

About three years ago I repurposed a lemon pound cake recipe to come up with a lilikoi cake that remains one of the best things ever to come out of my oven. I tried to find the original recipe for Iwashi, to no avail, so I backward-engineered the lilikoi recipe, tweaked it a little and baked it up.

Here it is. It’s better for the lesser amounts of sugar and flour. More tang, less density. Worth breaking the rules.

LEMON POUND CAKE

» 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
» 1 cup sugar
» 4 large eggs
» 1-1/2 cups flour
» 1 teaspoon baking powder
» 1/2 teaspoon salt
» 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from 2 to 4 lemons, depending on how juicy they are)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time.

In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Beat dry mixture gradually into creamed mixture. Beat in lemon juice.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake about 60 minutes, until a pick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Nutritional information unavailable.

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