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There’s a special place in my heart for loaf cakes.

They’re unfussy and unassuming. They don’t demand layers and decoration and all of the foofaraw that can go along with a serious baking project. They don’t demand a special occasion.

They’re suitable for dessert, portable for picnics, and a great excuse for sweet snacking. If you call them quick breads you can get away with eating them for breakfast. (Like banana bread, or carrot loaf cake.)

This lemon poppy seed loaf cake has a bright lemon flavor and is dotted with poppy seeds that add a textural contrast to the tender cake crumb.

The trick to getting the lemon flavor to shine through is grating the lemon zest right into the sugar and then stirring the zest around in the sugar.

This helps to release the lemon oils in the zest and infuse the sugar with all of that delightful lemon fragrance. It’s a technique you can use in any baked good that calls for citrus zest.

But other than mixing the sugar and the zest together, the technique on this lemon poppy seed cake is pretty simple and straightforward.

You cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture turns pale and fluffy. Lots of people skimp on this step. It’s more than just mixing the butter and sugar together. You want to whip enough air into the butter to create pockets for the leavener to expand and give the cake a light texture. In a stand mixer this will take a few minutes. With a hand mixer a bit longer.

If you feel the mixture in your fingers it should feel moist and light and there should be barely any grit because most of the sugar will have dissolved.

Then you mix in the eggs and buttermilk and lemon juice.

And then it’s just a matter of whisking the flour and baking powder and soda and salt together and adding the dry stuff to the wet stuff and mixing until the mixture is just combined.

Then there’s the simple matter of stirring in the poppy seeds and transferring the batter to a loaf pan that’s been sprayed with nonstick spray.

Then the cake goes into the oven where it bakes into a tender golden loaf.

While the cake is in the oven, you can make the lemon glaze.

The glaze is just a mix of powdered sugar and lemon juice, but it helps keep the cake moist and gives some extra lemon zing to the cake.

This one’s a keeper.

And it’s a good one for whenever you want to scratch the itch for cake without going to too much trouble.