Luscious lemon drizzle cake

I love lemon drizzle cake, a true Women’s Institute cake-stall staple. But I’ve never been satisfied with the ones I’ve made, no matter how highly recommended the recipe; they never seemed quite moist enough, and the crackly glaze didn’t work. I tried several recipes I found online and none hit the spot till I found this one. It’s lovely and moist and truly is luscious when split and sandwiched with home-made lemon curd. And as a bonus it’s really easy to make. The only thing wrong with Sylvie’s recipe is that it doesn’t make enough cake 🙂 Certainly not for choir practice purposes. So I doubled the ingredients, converted it to metric, and made a nice large round cake; but you could make it in a loaf tin too.

280 g self-raising flour
2 tsps baking powder
225 g butter, softened
225 g golden caster sugar
4 tbsp good quality lemon curd
Grated rind of 2 lemons (you’ll use the juice for the glaze)
4 eggs, whisked
2 tbsp water or lemon juice

Syrup:
Juice of 2 lemons
150 g granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 175 C and grease and line a large loaf tin or 18 cm round cake tin.

Put all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon and then a hand-held mixer for a maximum of 3 minutes. Pour into the prepared loaf or cake tin and bake for about an hour, or until the top is springy and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, make the syrup, by mixing the lemon juice and sugar together. It’s important to use granulated sugar so that the glaze stays crunchy and doesn’t just dissolve.

Remove the cake from the oven, and leaving it in the tin pierce the top all over with a fine skewer or a fork. While the cake is still hot, pour the syrup all over the top and leave it in the tin to cool.

Once cold, store in an airtight tin. If you want, you can split the cake horizontally and sandwich the two halves together with more lemon curd.