recipe; meyer lemon coffee cake

In our front yard we have a fruit tree and since we moved in the family has been arguing about what it is. Adrian and I have been saying it's a lemon tree and his parents have been saying it's a lime tree. They even went as far as using the fruit off of the tree as limes, even though the taste just didn't seem right. The reason we didn't agree that it was a lime tree is because some of the fruit was turning yellow before they went bad, which I knew limes didn't do. Well, in the last week or so all of the fruit has turned a yellow/orange so Adrian and I tried them again. This confused us even further because they tasted a lot like oranges! I did some research and found out that it is a Meyer lemon tree, which is a cross between lemons and mandarin oranges and is originally from China and is popular in California. I immediately started looking for some lemon recipes. The first one I tried was lemon cookies and they didn't turn out so great. They were good, just not as good as I was expecting. My second try was this Martha Stewart Meyer Lemon coffee cake recipe. I made a couple of changes, but otherwise it's the same as hers. 

Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake

Streusel
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 ounces cold unsalted butter

Coffee Cake
5 Meyer lemons, sliced very thin
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 ounces unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons lemon zest
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream

Glaze
1 cup confectioners sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9 inch angel food cake pan. In a medium bowl mix together the streusel ingredients. Crumbling together with a pastry cutter or your hands until medium clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.

Slice lemons into very thin slices and cook in a medium saucepan of simmering water for 1 minute. When finished, lay out lemon slices to cool.

Sift and combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, set aside. In a separate bowl beat together butter, sugar, and lemon zest on medium until fluffy. While the mixer is still running add eggs one at a time, and then the vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture and sour cream, alternating, about three separate times until all of it is mixed together.

Pour half of the batter into buttered cake pan and place one row of lemon slices on top. Pour the rest of the batter into the pan and place the rest of the lemons in a single row. So you should have 1/2 cake batter, row of lemons, remaining cake batter, row of lemons. You may have extra lemons, I did. Lastly, pour the streusel on the very top and then place in oven. Bake for 55 minutes. Cool for approximately 15 minutes. While cooling, combine the lemon juice and confectioners sugar to make the glaze. Once the cake is cool pour the glaze on top, let set for about 3-5 minutes, and serve. Enjoy!!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention I changed up my blog design a lot a couple of nights ago. I'm so much happier with it. It's more 'me'. What do you guys think?