By Denis Sheehan MIH
I use twitter predominantly for sourcing news of the hospitality and catering variety, alongside keeping up with main stream media, politics, and thought provokers. Harry Murray MBE is my favourite hospitality thought provoker, and it’s James O’Brien for politics, both seem to have good radars and rudders.
Trawling for news can lead to much scrolling, and to brighten this exercise I follow a number of accounts that frequently use strong imagery.
Yesterday evening I saw the image above, and it absolutely captivated me, like most images that do so not quite sure why, it just did.
As the person posting and I follow each other I replied asking if I could publish the image alongside the recipe to make it. Thankfully, Jackie aka The Baking Nanna agreed, so you can enjoy the imagery too, as well as a recipe to make Lemon Drizzle Cake below.
If you want to encounter images paying homage to the joy of baking on twitter, you can follow The Baking Nanna here.
Lemon Drizzle Cake Recipe
For the sponge:
- 225g Stork or butter (I use Stork)
- 225g caster sugar
- 4 eggs
- 225g self-raising flour
- Juice and zest of two lemons
For the lemon drizzle:
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 1 tablespoon of boiling water
- 1 tablespoon of icing sugar
For the lemon icing:
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 70g icing sugar
For the crunchy lemon topping:
- Zest of two lemons
- 2/3 tablespoons of granulated sugar
Method:
First start with the crunchy lemon topping as you need this to dry out.
Zest your two lemons and mix with the granulated sugar spread it out on a tray and leave to dry (save these lemons to make your drizzle).
For the cake, preheat your oven to 160 degrees fan.
Then mix together your Stork/butter with the caster sugar till it’s light and fluffy (make sure you give it a good mix as this will give you a beautiful light fluffy sponge).
Add your eggs one at a time, then the zest and lemon juice then slowly fold in the flour.
I used a bundt but this would work just as well in a loaf tin.
Grease your tin or bundt and line with baking paper, pour in the mix and bake for around 30/40 mins (this all depends on your oven check it with a skewer after 30 if it comes out dry it’s ready).
When the cake is nearly baked make your drizzle by adding all the ingredients and mixing together.
Once your cake is baked place on a cooling tray, poke holes all over the top and pour over your drizzle and leave to soak till it’s cool enough to turn out.
When your cake is cool enough to decorate, make up your lemon icing by mixing together the lemon juice, icing sugar and enough cold water to make a pourable icing (add little water at a time but don’t worry if you add too much just add some more icing sugar to bring it back).
Pour over your cake and give it a few minutes to settle then just sprinkle over your crunchy lemon topping.