The latest lesson of the food photography course I’ve been following along with is up. As it happens I’d been reading C’est Moi Qui l’ai Fait, and noticed a recipe for cake au citron très citron, version mini. Well, I love lemons, I still had a naked one in the fridge from the limoncello, and they sounded like a good photo opportunity, so off I went.
They are very easy to make and turned out beautifully: light and moist (if not very lemony in my case through a shortage of zest; I had another small lemon but it didn’t produce much zest).
Ideas for variations: lemon icing, or maybe a blob of lemon curd in the middle (I didn’t have any, or I would have tried this to make up for the lack of zest).
Pascale’s pink silicone mould is prettier than mine, but I was still quite pleased with the photos, as I just did them quickly.
Makes 12
3 medium eggs
180 g caster sugar
10 cl single cream
175 g self-raising flour, or the same amount of plain with 1/2 tsp of baking powder
40 g demi-sel butter, melted and cooled (I didn’t have any salted so I added a pinch of salt to the flour)
2 tbs olive oil, not too strong
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Juice of the lemon, should be about 5 cl
Preheat oven to 165C.
Beat together eggs and sugar with an electric whisk until thick and pale. Beat in the cream, then the flour and baking powder. Beat in the butter, then the oil, and finally the lemon zest and juice.
Butter a muffin tin and 3/4-fill each mould. Bake for 20 minutes, then test with a skewer or thin-bladed knife, returning to the oven for 5 minutes if not quite cooked. Leave to cool slightly in the tin, then carefully loosen with a palette knife and cool on a wire rack. Will keep several days in a sealed container.
fantastic! that first image is wonderfully powerful, lots of energy.
well done!
They look very nice. If you want them to be more lemony you could brush them with a mixture of sugar and lemon juice just when you remove them from the oven, like we do with the lemon drizzle cake in uk.
Bonne journée.
Hi Pascale
Yes! That’s exactly what I did with a few of them, and it added a nice lemon tang. I think a blob of lemon curd would be good too.
Hi Veronica! I’ve been moseying around your brilliant blog using the link from the Open University food and drink forum. So glad the limoncello recipe spawned lots of ideas for leftover lemons! Your food photography is fantastic! I notice you link to Jill Dupleix’s site, and she takes a lot of her own photos too for her books – yours are very bit as good as hers. I shall return to your site as it it a great insight into living and cooking in France. Chat to you soon over on the OU
Hi Maggie
Blimey, thanks for the compliment about the photos! I don’t think I’m that good yet, I was just lucky with this one 🙂 I’ve only been seriously trying to photograph food for a couple of months. It’s fun but a bit disruptive when you need to get food on the table 🙂