Lemon and poppyseed cake: the sequel

So last week I made this very light lemon and poppy seed cake from a recipe by Yvette van Boven, and although it was great and lovely and light, it was a bit too much of a hassle for me to fit this into a quick Saturday afternoon bake. So I decided to try again, this time using a simple cake which I've been baking my entire childhood (the English would call it a pound cake), which requires only one bowl, a simple set of instructions, and no splitting of eggs. Also, no glazing. Let's see if this works just as well.

Ingredients
200 g butter
200 g sugar
200 g self-raising flour
2-3 eggs (combined weight should be about 200 g)
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
juice and peel of one lemon

Preheat the oven to 180 C and grease and line a baking tin. I used a loaf tin for this one.
Mix the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the flour, poppy seeds, lemon juice and peel.  Finally, add the eggs one at a time, and keep whisking for about 4-5 minutes after the last egg has been added to add as much air as possible (I made this cake in the KitchenAid, so no sore arms from too much whisking).
Pour the mixture in the baking tin and bake for about 40-45 minutes. Leave to cool.
If you want, you can add a glaze, but my teeth were still recovering from the last cake, so I didn't. We just had a slice, still-warm from the oven, with our morning tea.

So, the verdict. Is this easy, run-off-the-mill cake just as good as Yvette's fancy one?
Sadly, or gladly, depending on your point of view, it isn't. It's a pretty nice cake, but it is quite heavy and stodgy compared to the 'light' professional one. The texture really is much denser. The lemon doesn't come through quite as well in this cake, it tastes more buttery. All in all, this makes you feel as if you won't have to eat anything for the rest of the day, while the other cake somehow floats away to an airy memory.
Funny, isn't it, how using almost exactly the same ingredients, just a few simple differences in the method leaves you with two so wildly different cakes? The lack of airiness is all due to the lack of separately beaten egg whites, of course, and it is good to know that that makes so much of a difference. And Yvette's cake would have been even lighter if I'd followed her recipe and used 4 egg whites instead of 2.
Anyway, moral of the story is; more elbow grease and bowls to wash also gives you a better cake. And as it turns out, Yvette also has a recipe for a pound cake, one that does involve two bowls and egg splitting and separately beaten egg whites, but is otherwise almost as simple as the one above. This, combined with the lemon juice and poppy seeds, may well be the holy grail of lemon and poppy seed cakes; stay tuned!