Today’s recipe is a Lemon Drizzle cake. I am not sure why, but we recently (and by we I mean our little friends group in college) have become obsessed with lemon drizzle cake. Especially in this weird weather, where it is super humid and warm and then suddenly rains and all, lemon drizzle cake is perfect. It is refreshing (more refreshing than chocolate- I am sad to admit) and as it doesn’t contain cream and all it will survive a warmer summer day without being constantly refrigerated – and let’s be honest- it is just a very yummy (and super easy) cake!
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Baking time: 25-30 minutes
Difficulty level: simple
Ingredients:
250 g butter
250 g sugar
325 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
50 mL milk
finley grated rind of 2 to 3 lemons (depending on the size of your lemons)
The recipe is a Mary Berry’s original however, I have changed the quantities slightly and added more lemon (I really like my cake to be very lemon-y). Also I changed the baking time to slightly less than what she says simply because that made my cake more fluffy and even more enjoyable to eat.
Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
The preparation of the cake is super easy and what I like to call a ‘one-pot’ reactions (you won’t believe how much chemists appreciate a one pot reaction!). So for the ‘one-pot’ reaction, the most straight forward thing to do is to measure out all ingredients into one bowl and mix them all together. However, that can sometimes produce those annoying lumps and make the cake slightly less fluffy so I optimised the procedure a little.
So measure out the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix until well combined and fluffy. Then add the eggs (you can add all at one time) and blend together until you see little bubbles forming.
Add the flour, baking powder, salt. And last add the milk and the lemon rind. This is now no longer a one pot reaction but as I said, it improves the fluffiness of the cake so I would give it a try and it only takes slightly longer.
Now transfer the batter into a cake tin- I normally use a rectangular baking tray for this.
And bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 180 °C.
While the cake bakes, take 4 lemons and squeeze out as much lemon juice as possible! Then add about 150 g sugar and mix well.
Once the cake is done (best is to take it out when the sponge is quite springy and bounces back when you press carefully on it), take a fork and poke holes into the cake- this will allow you the optimum distribution of lemon juice.
Then pour the lemon-sugar mixture all over the cake, make sure to completely cover it. Once it has dried, you can cover it with a thin layer of icing sugar to hide the holes away.
Now sit down and enjoy!!
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