One thing I missed extremely during my time in London was the winterly weekend getaways to the snowy Swiss alps I am used to from my childhood. Finally I have them back!! Since the season started I have spent every free day in the snow. The fresh mountain air and the relaxed ambiance are irreplaceable. There is no better way to finish off a long day on the slopes than with a piece of fresh cake and a cup of hot chocolate (with the obligatory generous splash of some sort of Alcohol, Amaretto in my case) – pure bliss. Here is a lemony classic I personally love – even if you think you are drowning the cake in lemon, use all of the lemon sirup to drizzle!
Lemon Drizzle Cake
makes a 20cm loaf cake
You’ll need
2 lemons
170g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
2/3 packet of vanilla sugar
3.5 eggs, or 3 large eggs
90g flour
90g cornflour
2/3 tsp baking powder
1 small pinch of salt
100g icing sugar
- Preheat your oven to 180°C fan. Grease a 20cm loaf tin with butter and dust with flour. Refrigerate until needed.
- Zest and juice both lemons.
- Mix the butter with both sugars until light and fluffy, then gradually add the eggs individually while mixing continuously.
- In a separate bowl (I never do this in a separate bowl, although maybe I should…) combine the two types of flour with the baking powder, salt and lemon zest. Now fold these ingredients into your butter-egg mixture.
- Pour your dough into the prepared tin. Bake in the bottom half of the oven for about 50 minutes, until a skewer comes out almost clean. Let the cake rest for a few minutes before gently (I repeat, gently, otherwise it might break, I am a pro at breaking loaf cakes) removing it from the tin. Once removed from its tin, generously poke the cake multiple times with your skewer. These pores you are creating are step 1 in achieving lemony heaven.
- Step 2 of lemony heaven entails bringing your lemon juice and icing sugar to a boil in a small pan, for 1-2 minutes.
- And now for the final step: using a brush, and with some tender loving care, gently and evenly brush your lemon cake repeatedly with the sweet lemon juice until it has completely soaked it up. You might think it is too much juice – NONSENSE. There can NEVER be enough lemon!
- It is advisable to wait until the cake has cooled before tasting, but no judging from my side if you can’t wait ;-).
Rating: 9/10
I feel maybe a little more zest and some juice in the dough would get it a 10/10.
The Medical Gourmet 