The girls are always asking me for lemon drizzle cake - it seems that the school makes a fabulous one for snack time. Of course I couldn't go with a standard version, and wanted to incorporate a couple of different ideas. As well as lemons, I wanted to use blood oranges for a fuller scent load, and a pink icing. And given my recent obsession with frangipane and nut flours, I also wanted to include a little ground almond into the cake, though I suspect you could probably swap that for polenta too.Ingredients:
Cake:
300g butter, softened
300g caster sugar
zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
zest of 2 blood oranges
5 eggs
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g ground almonds
Sugar glaze:
juice of 2 unwaxed lemons
juice of 2 blood oranges
100g caster sugar
icing sugar
Method:
200g self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g ground almonds
Sugar glaze:
juice of 2 unwaxed lemons
juice of 2 blood oranges
100g caster sugar
icing sugar
Method:
- Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC/160ºC fan. Using a 2lb loaf tin, either grease and line it, or pop-in a liner. (I made two smaller cakes)
- Zest all of the citrus fruits, and then juice them. Keep separately
- Cream the butter and caster sugar together until light and doubled in volume and pale. Add half of the zest, then add the eggs, one at a time, and beat thoroughly in between
- Add the ground almonds, and combine
- Add the flour, and mix until just combined
- You want the mixture to have a soft dropping consistency, so if required add a little milk. This may not be necessary, depending on how dry your almonds are
- Pour into the tin(s) and bake for 50-55 minutes or so (35-40 minutes for smaller tins). A toothpick or cake tester should come out clean, although there may be a few (almonds) crumbs stuck to the tester.
- For the icing, mix together the caster sugar and the juice. Warm briefly to allow the sugar to dissolve.
- Pour the glaze over the top of your cake, piercing it with holes if you want it to saturate the cake
- Mix the remaining glaze with some icing sugar, to your chosen consistency, and mix in the remaining zest. Coat or pipe or zigzag as appropriate
- Allow to cool in the tin before turning out.
Notes:
- The mixture may look curdled - this is the impact of the zest - don't worry about it
- I like to combine the almond before the flour, as you don't want to overwork the gluten in the flour
- The bicarbonate of soda reacts with the acid, adding further lift to the batter. You could use baking powder, but I used this specifically because of the acid reaction
- I spooned the glaze on top of the cake and allowed it to soak it. Having thoroughly saturated the cake, I mixed the remaining juice with icing sugar, until reaching a spooning consistency. This is obviously a lot of sugar, but let's not forget I'm making this for the kids... Because I used blood orange juice, it was also pink, but that was part of my plan! If you want a more professional teatime finish, you can either use just lemon juice, or pipe it onto the cake in a more zig-zag pattern
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| The cake batter before baking |
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| Spoon the cooled syrup over the cake, having pierced several holes into it |
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| The finished article, you can see the moisture layer all around the edge of the cake |
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| Yes it's garish and pink - if you don't want pink icing, don't use the blood orange juice in the icing layer. You can still use it in the syrup for flavour. |
