RHC: Golden Lemon Almond Cake

I was inspired to make another cake from one of my favorite cake books Rose' Heavenly Cakes and the Golden Lemon Almond cake has been at the top of my to-bake list for a while now. I decided to try out my new Nordic Ware 6-cup bundt pan on this cake instead of the usual 10-12 cup just so I wouldn't be tempted to consume more as I'm sure this one is going to be really good!

Baking this cake made me realize that I haven't quite mastered Rose's 2-stage mixing method as I made the mistake of putting only 1/4 cup of the sour cream to the butter and dry ingredients, while adding the rest of it to the egg mixture. I only discovered that it should've been the other way around when I ended up with a very dry and coarse flour mixture. I still pressed on though and added a little of the egg mixture just to moisten the flour enough for everything to blend well then still added the rest of the egg mixture in 2 stages. The batter still turned out the way it's supposed to be and the cake rose beautifully in the oven so I'm quite happy and relieved that it didn't get messed up completely because of my mistake. I haven't tried the cake yet though so I still don't know how it may have affected the cake's crumb and texture. If ever this cake turned out tough and dry because of my error, I hope the lemon syrup would compensate for that.

(ETA)VERDICT: I wanted to wait until tomorrow to try this as Rose mentioned that the lemon flavor improves and becomes more subtle the following day. But I decided to try it this afternoon as I also wanted to find out if my error in the mixing process affected the overall texture of the cake. After slicing a small piece, having a look at the crumb and tasting it, I can conclude now that the cake turned out a little dry and crumbly (not completely though because of the syrup) and it doesn't have that velvet crumb that I wanted as it's a little rough on the palate. As you can see in the pics, the cake looks really coarse even more so when placed beside the Swedish Pear and Almond cake. Taste-wise, I was surprised at how subtle the lemon flavor is given the amount of lemons I had to zest (8 lemons!) to come up with 8 grams plus the addition of the lemon oil and syrup. The subtleness of the lemons still allowed the flavor of the almonds to shine through which is what I like about the cake. This lemon and almond combo really tastes so familiar to me though-- I think I've once tried locally-produced lemon-flavored biscuits before that have a similar flavor to this cake. Overall, I like this cake and would bake it again (to serve as a brunch or mid-afternoon snack) but I can't say that this is the best lemon cake I've had. Or I'm just probably used to eating overly tart lemon cakes and desserts like lemon bars, lemon meringue pie or anything that has lemon curd included in it.