Vintage Cake Pan: Craft this vintage-inspired covered cake pan for your next luscious lemon dessert

Craft a vintage cake pan for your next luscious lemon dessert. We give you instructions and recipes for two!

With disposable cake pans, some paper and paint, you can create a sensation at your next pot-luck or dinner party with this Vintage Cake Pan. Not just a cake pan. It has a detachable recipe card, so you can share the wealth. And there are two sizes to choose from with this craft.

We have an over-ambitious lemon tree, so we chose the noble lemon as our theme. Don't worry. You can adapt this craft to your own baking preference.

We'd like to start the sharing right now. We're including two recipes we hope you'll try in your new pans. If you make the 8" X 12" pan, we have Deluxe Lemon Bars that have been a family favorite for decades. If you go for the 3" X 5.5" mini-loaf pans, we found a wonderful Victorian Lemon-Coriander Seed Cake for you to enjoy.

Large Vintage Cake Pan

Materials

Vintage image (Free PDF download)
Aluminum cake pan with plastic top, 8" X 12".
Black construction paper.
Ribbon, braided yellow, 1/4" wide and about 40" long (Ours was yellow and white).
A lemon.
Craft paint, bright yellow.
Glue stick or other paper adhesive.
Tacky craft glue (like Aleene's Tacky Glue).
Craft knife or razor blade.
Scissors or paper cutter.

Instructions

Print the large vintage image and the Deluxe Lemon Bar recipe on heavy-weight photo paper. Trim them both to 3.5" X 7" and glue them back to back with glue stick (see Tips).
Trim black construction paper to fit within the recessed top of the plastic cover. Ours measured 6.5" X 10 3/8".
Cut the lemon in half. Pour craft paint in a paper plate. Using the lemon half like a stamp, dip it in the yellow paint, and stamp it randomly on the black paper until you like the pattern (see Tips). Let it dry.
Position the recipe card in the center of the black paper. Mark and cut four short diagonal slits with a craft knife in the black paper and insert the corners of the recipe card.
Adhere the black paper to the plastic top with tacky craft glue around the outside edges.
Cut pieces of yellow ribbon to trim the edges of the paper and attach it with tacky craft glue. You might want to glue small ribbon bows at the corners.

Tips

We pre-printed the recipe cards for you, but you may want to hand-write the recipe name, as we did. Use your graphics program to remove the preprinted words.
To get the edges of your recipe card aligned, initially trim the vintage image and the recipe a little larger than the final size. Glue them back to back and then trim them together.
Printing with fruit takes a little practice. Get plenty of paint on the face of the lemon. Blot it off a little on paper towel, then stamp some prints on scrap black paper until you can see the detail of the lemon. Now you are ready to print on the real paper. When you stamp, you can overlap prints, but leave lots of black paper showing so people can recognize that it is a lemon slice.
Our Lemon Bar recipe calls for a 9" X 13" pan, but the craft calls for a 8" X "12" pan. Don't worry; the recipe works fine in the smaller pan.

Recipe

Deluxe Lemon Bars

2 1/4 cups sifted flour
1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
1 cup butter or margarine
4 eggs, beaten
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice (about two lemons)
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350° F. Sift together 2 cups flour and powered sugar. Cut in butter until mixture clings together. Press mixture into a 13" X 9" baking dish. Bake for 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Beat together eggs, granulated sugar, lemon juice and peel. Sift together the remaining 1/4 cup flour and baking powder. Stir into egg mixture. Pour over baked crust. Bake 25 minutes longer. Sprinkle with additional powdered sugar. Cool. Cut into small bars.

Mini-Loaf Vintage Cake Pan

Materials

Vintage image (Free PDF download).
Aluminum mini-loaf pans with plastic tops, 3" X 5.5".
Double-sided tape.
Glue stick or other paper adhesive.
Scissors or paper cutter.

Instructions

Print the vintage image and the Seed Cake recipe on heavy-weight matte photo paper. Trim them both to 4.25" X 4.25", and glue them back to back with glue stick (see Tips for Large Cake pan above).
Fold the recipe card in half, so the image is on the front. Attach it to the top of the mini-loaf pan with a tiny piece of double-sided tape, so it is removable.

Recipe

Victorian Lemon-Coriander Seed Cake

This classic tea cake comes from the Victorian tradition of breakfast and afternoon cakes. It is delicious toasted or as a dessert with ice cream, lemon or berry sauce. The surprise is how comfortably the caraway flavor blends with the spices and lemon for a "What is that flavor?" experience. This recipe makes one loaf or four mini-loaves and uses approximately 3 lemons.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (one stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground mace
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup dried currants
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
Lemon Butter (recipe follows, optional)

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven and pre-heat the oven to
350° F. Butter and flour a 4.5" X 8.5" loaf pan (or two mini-loaf pans).
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl.
3. Beat the butter and zest with an electric mixer on medium speed in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add the sugar, eggs, coriander and mace and beat until smooth. Add half of the milk and beat just until blended. Reduce the speed to low, add the flour mixture in two batches, scraping down the side of the bowl, and beat just until blended. Add the remaining milk and beat just until blended. Stir in the currants and the caraway seeds with a rubber spatula. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan(s) and smooth the top.
4. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes (40 to 50 minutes for mini-loaf pans) until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes and turn out onto the rack to cool to room temperature. Serve, cut into thin slices, with Lemon Butter, if desired. (The tea bread will keep, tightly wrapped, at room temperature for up to 3 days.)

Lemon Butter

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 teaspoon confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Stir the ingredients together in a small bowl until combined well.

From LUSCIOUS LEMON DESSERTS © 2001 by Lori Longbotham. Used with permission of Chronicle Books, San Francisco. Visit ChronicleBooks.com.

Interesting note: You may notice in the vintage 1910 postcard image of the lemon balloon, the old woman has a parrot, a cat, a canary, and is holding a book. Written on the book is the title and author, "Three Weeks" by Glyn. Elinor Glyn (1864-1943) was one of the first novelists of erotic fiction for women. Was the illustrator making an editorial comment?

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