FAY'S LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

My ex mother-in-law in coming to visit next week and so I wanted to bake something nice and my daughter Arabella suggested a lemon drizzle cake. The problem is I have never cooked one before so I thought it best to have practise run. I was with my ex husband for ten years and I don't think I baked a cake once in that entire period, so as this is the first cake I have ever made for my ex mother in law, I wanted to be a good one.

This is a recipe from Fay Ripley's first cookbook, it was pretty simple to make and took about an hour in total.

Ingredients for one cake - 8 good slices:

200g soft butter
200g golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
50g plain or white spelt flour
125 ground almonds
Zest of 2 lemons, finely grated
Juice of 1 lemon

For the icing:
Juice of 1 lemon
7-8 tablespoons icing sugar

A 20-22cm round cake tin

Preheat the oven to 180 C (fan), 200 C, gas mark 6.

Line the bottom of a round cake tin and butter the sides. 

Cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. I used an electric whisk to make this job easier and it took about 5 minutes.

Slowly whisk in the eggs one at a time. Arabella helped me with this part by cracking the eggs!

Then slowly add the flour, almonds and lemon zest and whisk all together.

Put the mixture into your lined and buttered tin and bake for 35-40 minutes. I did 35 minutes and I didn't need anymore time!

Remove from the oven and whilst still hot and in the tin, stab with a skewer or chopstick so you have around 15 little holes all over the cake. Arabella again helped with this part and got a bit over zealous - some of the holes were slightly too big!!

Drizzle the juice of 1 lemon into the holes and all over the cake. Leave in the tin to cool.

To make the icing, just mix a little lemon juice at a time into the icing sugar to make a light paste.

Smooth onto the top of the cake - this wasn't as easy as I thought! I think I added too much lemon juice as mine was a little too runny, not that it really matters.

Cut into slices and enjoy!

Lemon drizzle cake is not something I would normally eat, I would choose something with chocolate, but I am now a complete convert. This was really good. I actually surprised myself with how delicious it was and had a slice for breakfast and for lunch! Arabella is a huge fan as well. I did wonder how Arabella and I would eat an entire cake in a week and then make another one for next week, well I know now, it won't be a problem, I could eat this for every meal!!