Lemon Drizzle Cake
The drizzle goes on while the cake is hot and full of holes, which is the only way it gets past the surface.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 420
- Calories
- 5g
- Protein
- 20g
- Fat
- 56g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 225 g unsalted butter, softened
- 225 g caster sugar
- 4 eggs
- 225 g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 lemons
- 3 tbsp milk
- 100 g granulated sugar, for the drizzle
- 50 g icing sugar, optional
Instructions
- 1Heat the oven to 160C fan and line a 900 g loaf tin with baking paper, leaving an overhang on the long sides.
- 2Zest 3 of the lemons. Rub the zest into the caster sugar with your fingertips for 30 seconds — the friction and the sugar crystals release the citrus oils, and this gives far more lemon flavour than stirring zest into batter.
- 3Beat the softened butter with the lemon sugar for 4 to 5 minutes, until pale and visibly increased in volume. This is where the cake's lift comes from, so do not cut it short.
- 4Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. If it looks curdled, add a spoonful of the flour and it will come back.
- 5Fold in the flour, baking powder and salt until just combined, then fold in the milk. Stop the moment it is smooth — overworking develops gluten and makes the crumb tough.
- 6Scrape into the tin, level the top, and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back.
- 7While it bakes, make the drizzle: stir the granulated sugar with the juice of 2 lemons but do not heat it. The sugar should stay largely undissolved and grainy — that is what gives the crunchy crust.
- 8As soon as the cake comes out, while it is still in the tin and properly hot, prick it all over with a skewer, going most of the way down. Forty or fifty holes.
- 9Spoon the drizzle slowly over the whole surface, letting each addition soak in before the next. A hot cake full of holes absorbs it; a cool one sheds it onto the plate.
- 10Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin so it reabsorbs everything.
- 11If you want an icing as well, mix the icing sugar with the juice of the last lemon and pour it over the cooled cake.
Lemon drizzle is a cake defined by its finish. The sponge underneath is a straightforward pound cake; everything memorable about it happens in the two minutes after it leaves the oven.
Rub the zest into the sugar
Citrus flavour lives in oils held in the coloured part of the peel. Stirring zest into a batter releases some of them. Rubbing the zest into granulated sugar with your fingertips releases far more — the crystals act as an abrasive and the friction warms the oils out.
The sugar turns pale yellow and damp and smells strongly of lemon within thirty seconds. It is a free upgrade to any citrus bake.
Zest before you juice. Zesting a squeezed lemon is miserable.
Hot cake, many holes
This is the step people get wrong. Drizzle poured over a cooled cake runs off the sides and sits on top as a wet film.
The cake needs to be hot, still in its tin, and pierced deeply and often — forty or fifty holes with a skewer, going most of the way to the base. Hot crumb is open and thirsty; as it cools it contracts and draws the syrup down with it.
Then leave it in the tin until completely cold. Turning it out early loses everything that has not yet been absorbed.
Do not dissolve the sugar
The drizzle is granulated sugar stirred into lemon juice, not a cooked syrup. Most of the sugar should still be visible.
Those undissolved crystals settle on the surface as the juice soaks in and set into a thin crunchy crust. Heat the mixture and you get a smooth glaze instead — pleasant, but a different cake.
Cream properly, fold gently
Four or five minutes of creaming butter and sugar whips air into the fat, and that air is most of the rise — the baking powder only expands what is already there. Two minutes is not enough and the cake will be dense.
The folding is the opposite instinct. Once the flour is in, every extra turn develops gluten, and gluten in a cake means chew rather than crumb. Stop at just combined.
Low and slow
160C fan rather than 180C. A loaf tin is deep, and at higher heat the outside sets and browns long before the middle is cooked, giving you a domed cracked top and a raw seam.
Nutrition
Around 420 calories a slice from ten. It keeps very well — five days in a tin, and genuinely better on day two once the drizzle has fully distributed. It freezes whole or in slices for three months.
Comments
Sign in to leave a comment
No comments yet — be the first