Lemon Drizzle Cake

I started out baking as someone who didn’t really like cake. I’ve never had a sweet tooth; I am the ‘starter rather than dessert’ kind of dinner guest. What I enjoyed the most was delighting people with baked goods. I liked the idea that people could be surprised by cake; a seemingly normal vanilla cupcake that made people squeal when they bit into it to discover a rainbow centre, an oreo biscuit hidden at the bottom of a mini cheesecake, a birthday cake filled with my friend’s favourite sweets…These were my motivations for dedicating so much time to dessert.

It is for this reason I know first hand that baking can be an incredibly cathartic, fulfilling past time, completely independent of the results. The mild, comforting aroma of sifted flour, the joy of ‘the rubbing in’ method (passed down from my great granny, to my granny, to my mum, and eventually to me), the silky smoothness of shortbread dough or the glossy shine of ganache. All of these things fill me with an immeasurable happiness; baking is such a delight for the senses that I find it can’t help but lift my mood.

I often hear ‘oh, I can cook, but not bake! I’m awful at baking! It’s far too scientific/I can’t follow a recipe/I don’t know why but it always goes wrong!’ (delete as appropriate). Not only do I want to dispel the myth that baking is a skill one either possesses or doesn’t, but I also have an ulterior motive for blogging about cake. As someone who is constantly trawling through food blogs to find new and exciting recipes, I am bombarded with such messages as ‘This cake was too good to resist!’, ‘I had to take a break from my diet to enjoy this one!’, or ‘Thank God my husband/children/parents/neighbour saved my waistline by taking this cake off my hands!’ Equally, I see more and more posts about ‘clean’ cake, free from any combination of ingredients on a long list of ‘naughty’ foods.

People, please take note: cake does not carry a moral standing. It cannot be categorised as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Different foods have different nutritional value, but food should never be related to a feeling like guilt. Everything in moderation, including moderation. I want to write from (hopefully) a refreshing perspective that takes these negative feelings out of food and values it in a different way.

I aim to write sometimes funny, hopefully interesting, recipe posts. Baking for well-being, for sharing, birthdays, breakfast, lunch or dinner. Recipes for a special occasion or a non-occasion, for when you’ve woken up feeling like it’s a rainy day despite the fact the sun is shining.

My first post is going to be a lemon cake; not too hard, but an all-round favourite. I can’t make this cake without someone coming into the kitchen and commenting on the wonderful, citrus smell. I love the buttery richness of a lemon cake and the combination of the soft sponge with a crunchy top.

Lemon Drizzle Cake

170g butter, either room temperature or softened in the microwave,

170g caster sugar,

3 large eggs,

225g self-raising flour,

drop of vanilla essence,

115g natural yoghurt,

Zest of two lemons,

Pre-heat your oven to 180C, 160C fan oven, or gas mark 4. Line a loaf tin with some greaseproof paper. (There is no need to cut a piece to fit into the bottom, just rip off a large square and push it in so all sides are covered. This way you don’t need to wash the tin afterwards!)

Combine the butter and sugar by beating it until it is light and fluffy. Add the flour, vanilla, eggs and lemon zest to the bowl and mix gently with a wooden spoon until combined. If you have a mixer, I like to mix the lemon in by hand as I find the zest gets caught up on the blades meaning less lemon goes into the cake! Carefully add the yoghurt and mix by hand until just combined. Do not mix the cake more than this as doing so can prevent the cake from rising well. If you wanted, at this point you could also stir in some blueberries to the mixture.

Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for around 45 minutes. The top of the cake should be golden and a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Given that a loaf cake takes quite a while to bake, sometimes the top can cook quicker than the centre and therefore burn. If your cake looks like it is getting a bit too dark on top, try covering it with some greaseproof paper for the last 15-20 minutes to prevent burning.

Once the cake is baked, take it out of the oven and place it on a wire rack in the tin. After 5-10 minutes you can use the greaseproof paper to lift the cake out of the tin and leave it on the rack to cool completely.

There are two toppings I like to alternate between when making lemon cake; either a crunchy crust or a bitter lemon glaze.

For the crunchy top, mix the juice of two lemons with 75g of granulated sugar.

For the glaze, combine the juice of two lemons with 50g of sifted icing sugar. Either icing can be poured onto the cake when it is still warm, for those bakers out there (including myself) who are too impatient to wait for a cake to cool before icing it!