Last week I borrowed a BBC Good Food recipe by Tana Ramsay to make a lovely lemon drizzle cake. Yes, admittedly I did burn the cake ever so slightly – I couldn’t hide the black edges, but it was still absolutely delicious. Plus, it’s the taste that counts, not the look, right?
You will need…
225g unsalted butter
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
And for the drizzle part…
juice 1 and a half lemons
85g caster sugar
Method…
Preheat the oven to 180C, fan 160C or gas mark 4, and line a loaf tin with grease proof paper.
Beat together the butter and first lot of caster sugar (225g) in a bowl, until it turns into a creamy mix. Then, add the eggs one by one and mix still one at a time, until the mixture is a smooth batter. Next, sift in the flour, then and the lemon zest, and mix until it goes back to being one mix. Spoon the mixture into the lined loaf tin, and use a spoon to smooth the top of the mix so it’s even.
Bake the mixture in the oven for 40-50 minutes, until you can put a knife into the middle of the cake and it comes out clean, with no wet mixture on it. When this is the case, carefully take out of the oven, remove from the tin, and leave to cool.
To make the drizzle part of the recipe mix together the juice from the 1 and a half lemons, and the second part of the caster sugar (85g). Use a fork or skewer to prick the cake all over (not all the way through), and pour the drizzle mix over the cake, preferably while the cake is slightly warm. The sugar mix will sink into the cake through the holes you’ve made, and then the sugar on top of the cake will form a crisp, sweet topping – no icing required.
To serve…
Once finished, leave the cake in a tin until it’s completely cooled, and then just serve in slices, perhaps with a cup of tea or coffee. If you’re like me and know it’ll soon be gone, you can leave in the tin to use up withing 3-4 days, or, if you don’t think you’ll get through it straight away, the original recipe suggests freezing for up to 1 month.
It’s a strange life right now, but when life gives you lemons, why not make lemon drizzle cake?
xx
