Extremely lemony: Lemon drizzle cake

Quick joke: What kind of cake does Snoop Dogg like? Lemon drizzle cake. Geddit? Okay, I digress.

Lemon drizzle cake has to be the most weekendy cakes to eat. It’s perfect for days when you feel like baking but you don’t really want the extra fuss. Like today. Also I went for a run today to clear my mind so I was full of energy that couldn’t wait to be used on cake making. I normally use the creaming method when making cakes (i.e. whisking butter and sugar until light and fluffy etc) but I personally realised that I prefer solid looking cakes that I can actually get full on. I want to feel the evidence of the calories I have consumed. Sponge cake doesn’t do that for me. It’s all light and fluffy and airy…I might as well not be eating anything. Know what I mean? Okay. Just me then.

So for this cake, I used the breadcrumbing method (there’s most probably a proper name for it but I’m Aisha and I like to make up words).

You will need:

• 175g self raising flour
• 175g caster sugar
• 175g butter, room temperature
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 3 large eggs or 4 medium eggs, room temperature
• Zest of 4 lemons and juice of 2 of those 4 lemons
• 2tsp vanilla essence
• 3 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp icing sugar

You need to:

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line the tin with greaseproof paper. I normally spray the tin with sunflower oil before putting the greaseproof paper at the bottom
2. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, butter and lemon zest together using NOTHING but your fingers. Make sure it resembles breadcrumbs and ensure that you don’t overdo it if not your cake will come out looking oooogly.
3. Mix the eggs with the vanilla essence in another bowl and whisk thoroughly. Reason for this is that since we’re not using the creaming method where air gets into the cake by creaming the butter and sugar, the egg whisking is the only way we can make up for this and really incorporate air into the cake.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture. Stir the mixture by using a fork to go around the bowl and cut across, like a number ‘8’. Don’t do this vigorously. Do it until the mixture ALMOST looks smooth.
5. Pour into the cake tin and leave for an hour or until you insert a skewer into the middle and it comes out clean.
6. Leave to cool in a tin then after 15 minutes, transfer to a cooling rack (remember to take the greaseproof paper off).
7. While the cake is still cooling, squeeze the juice of the lemons into a small saucepan and add 3 tbsp of caster sugar and 1 tsp icing sugar. Boil until the sugar has dissolved.
8. Make holes in the cake using the skewer then pour the boiling hot lemon syrup slowly on the cake.
9. Leave to cool then sprinkle icing sugar on it.

I have a pretty big family hence the big slices…I don’t just sit there and eat ample amounts of cake, as much as I’d love to. Enjoy by itself or vanilla ice cream. I will be making ice cream from scratch sometime soon so watch this space!

What’s your favourite weekendy cake?