Yes, you can make cake!
Keys to success: get the ingredients to room temperature. This helps with mixing the batter, and ensures that everything will blend. Blobs of butter in the batter will create holes in the finished cake.
The one tricky bit will be pinching together the lemon zest and the sugar. This helps spread the oil in the zest, really enhancing the flavor. You'll want to pinch and rub to really extract as much of the lemony-yumminess as possible.
You can use sour cream in the recipe, or, if you don't have it on hand, you can also use Greek yogurt.
Be sure to toast the nuts to really enhance the flavor.
Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake
yield: one 9x13 cake
Ingredients
Cake
zest of half a lemon
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups sour cream or Greek yogurt
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon table salt
Filling and Topping
2 cups or 12 ounces semi- or bittersweet chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate bars
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
tiny pinch salt
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted, coarsely chopped, optional
Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Butter a 9-x-13-inch baking pan. If not nonstick coated, cover the bottom with a rectangle of parchment paper. Set pan aside.
In a large bowl, pinch lemon zest into the sugar until you smell lemons and the sugar starts to be a little yellow. Add butter, and cream butter and eggs until very fluffy and well blended. Beat in vanilla. In a separate medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together. Alternately mix in sour cream and then dry ingredients into butter mixture until both are used up and the batter is smooth and very thick.
In a small dish, whisk together sugar, cinnamon and salt for filling and topping.
Spread half the cake batter in the bottom of prepared pan. Sprinkle with half of cinnamon-sugar mixture and 1 cup of chocolate chips. Dollop remaining cake batter over filling in spoonfuls. Use a rubber or offset spatula to gently spread it over the filling and smooth the top. Try to be gentle and spread the batter as thoroughly as you can. Don't stress, though, because the batter will spread while baking.
In the remaining cinnamon-sugar mixture, add the chopped walnuts. Sprinkle batter with sugar mixture, and remaining chocolate chips. With the palm of your hand, ever-so-gently press the chocolate chips a bit into the batter. No need to push them under the batter, but we want them to stick.
Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, rotating halfway through, until a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
Let cool for 15 minutes and then enjoy!