Citronmåne
Danish Lemon Half-Moon Cake- Yield
- One 9-inch round cake cut into 2 half-moons; serves 12
- Active
- 30 minutes
- Total
- 2 hours 45 minutes (includes cooling and setting the icing)
- Difficulty
- Easy
The story
Citronmåne, or lemon moon, is a dense lemon sponge with grated marzipan in the batter and a thick lemon icing on top. ScandiKitchen, a Scandinavian café and shop in London, writes that a large Danish cake producer began making it about 50 years ago, that the name comes from its crescent shape and yellow color, and that it became the supermarket cake people bought when they had no time to bake. The Hygge Style blog adds that it sits on the shelves of most Danish gas stations and is the usual emergency purchase when friends come to visit. At Easter it turns up as dessert at the end of the long påskefrokost. The Local, an English-language news site in Denmark, names citronmåne and the French-style citrontærte as the two popular lemon cakes for the Easter lunch dessert and describes the moon as a lemon-infused sponge with marzipan and icing. ScandiKitchen calls its homemade version far better than the packaged kind; this one is baked in a round springform pan and cut in half for the half-moon shape. In 2027 the Danish Easter lunch falls on Sunday, March 28. Bake the cake a day ahead, since the icing needs time to set before the cake is cut.
Ingredients and method
The full recipe, with US and metric measures and stand-ins for hard-to-find ingredients, is part of the Easter edition. Buy it once and keep the PDF.
Want to try first? Frankfurter Grüne Soße is free to cook.