lemon drizzle cake
5 Nov 2018
Last month my signed copy of Flour and Stone arrived, the new book by Nadine Ingram. A few years ago some of Nadine's recipes featured in an issue of Gourmet Traveller. I made the lemon dream cake, the chocolate manjari cake and a version of her famous pannacotta lamingtons which I found online. All the cakes were delicious and I was keen to try some more.
I've read the book from cover to cover and have bookmarked quite a few recipes but I decided to go with a classic, the lemon drizzle cake. One of my work colleagues is gluten intolerant and as the lemon drizzle cake recipe contains only a small amount of flour, I felt fairly confident I'd be able to make the cake gluten free. I decided to use some of the polenta flour I had on hand and used that instead of the flour.
The original recipe has quantities for 22 cm and 28 cm cakes but I scaled the recipe back to fit my handy dandy 17cm tin. Normally if I halve a 22cm cake recipe it works perfectly but the cake was too moist and only just held together. I remade the cake using regular flour and increased the quantity a little and it worked perfectly. The book's temperatures are for a fan forced oven so I increased my oven temperature by 10-20°C. It changed the bake time though. My cake was ready in 55 minutes unlike the 1 hour 15 minutes suggested in the book.
The cake came out a lovely golden brown and as soon as it was cool I iced the cake and topped it with some home made candied lemon rind. The cake is lovely and moist and equal parts buttery and lemony and it was a definite winner at work.
Here's the recipe for you adapted from the lemon drizzle cake recipe from Flour and Stone. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.
Ingredients
125g unsalted butter, softened
125g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs, lightly beaten
90g ground almonds
40g polenta or plain flour
1½ tsp grated lemon rind
25mls lemon juice
Icing
125g icing sugar
25mls lemon juice (about half a lemon)
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease, flour and line the base of a 17cm cake tin with baking paper.
Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs gradually, scraping the butter mix down the sides to ensure all is incorporated. Add the almonds, the lemon zest and the juice. Add the flour to the butter and eggs and mix a few times until the batter is combined.
Pour the batter into the tin and bake in the oven for 50 minutes to one hour until the cake springs back when touched. When cooked, take out of the oven and allow the cake to cool completely on a rack.
If the cake isn’t level you might have to trim the top. When cold, turn the cake upside down and remove the lining paper. The bottom of the cake is now the top.
Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice gradually until a thin stream of icing can pour off your spoon to drizzle. Spoon 3 spoonful’s of icing over the top of the cake and use the spoon to drag the icing to the edge of the cake. The icing will cover the cake and drizzle naturally. Allow the cake to set for at least 4 hours before serving.
The second time I made the cake I was time poor so instead of carefully mixing the ingredients in a stand mixer I put everything in the food processor and it worked like a charm!
See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.
Bye for now,
Jillian