Lemon Cake

Lemon cake is something that makes me drooollll…..Every time I walk past Pret, I’m super tempted to walk in and buy their Lemon cake slice…Its so so so tasty and that lemony tang…to die for..For of course, I don’t eat it every time, only about 4 times out of 5 🙂

So when I was thinking up of which cake flavour to make for my husband’s birthday cake, I automatically turned towards lush lemons…woohoo…This cake was so moist and tasty. I baked it on Monday and it stayed out to be decorated on Tuesday. We had some leftover on Wednesday ( still out at room temperature), and the cake was quite moist, hadn’t dried up yet.

I think I hit jackpot when I stumbled upon this recipe…its from BBC Good Food and its just amazing! There were a few things I adjusted here and there, but mostly the recipe is the same.

Use two 8 inch pans for best results

Ingredients:

Unsalted butter, softened – 350 gms

Caster sugar – 350 gms

Eggs medium, lightly beaten – 6

Plain Flour – 140 gms

Self raising flour – 280 gms

Lemons – 4 ( Use 3 if you are using limes, but you can adjust this as per your taste as you go along). We will use both zest and juice

Pinch of salt ( Leave out if using salted butter)

For the syrup (you will need double this if you want to slice the cake into two halves and put the sugar on both, I just brushed the tops):

Lemon – 1 ( Use 1/2 if you are using limes, but you can adjust this as per your taste as you go along). We will use both zest and juice

Caster Sugar – 3/4 cups

Water – 1 tablespoon

Method: 

1. Preheat oven to 140 degrees C. Oil and dust your two 8 inch pans and set aside. You can also use a 9 inch or 10 inch pan, the baking times will vary.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together till creamy and fluffy. Then put the beaten eggs in, little by little, mixing well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of the plain flour if you think the mixture is curdling.
3. Add the pinch of salt into the two flours and sieve. Fold the beaten egg mixture into the flours, then add in and fold the lemon zest and juice.
4. Make sure you don’t overmix and deflate the batter. This is the time to taste test for whether you need to add more lemons. I would suggest adding the lemon juice and zest little by little so you can taste it as you go along.
5. Put the batter into the prepared pans and bake at 140 degrees C. It took my cakes 50 minutes to bake, but my oven cooks much faster. The original recipe states 1 hour 15 minutes. It also depends on the cake tins you are using. Since I split the batter into two pans, it baked much faster than what it would have in one. So after 45 minutes watch out for your cake, it will be ready when a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.
6. While the cake is baking, put the lemon zest, juice, sugar and water in a pan and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
7. Once done, take out of the oven and leave to cool. When the cakes are cool, poke holes with a toothpick on top and brush with the cooled sugar syrup. You can brush with a second layer, but only if the syrup put earlier has been fully absorbed in the cake.
8. The top can easily become very moist, so while brushing with the syrup keep an eye out and stop if you feel its turning soggy.

As you can see, the cake has risen quite a lot…This is just one of the two, so I am pretty pleased with the recipe!

You can serve it as such, or do some sort of icing like buttercream, glaze, ganache etc. I carved it into a Wristwatch cake, and used Lemon Buttercream and Lemon White Chocolate Ganache on it.

Now go for it, and bake yourself a yummy gorgeous lemon cake!