Dazzling Drizzle Cake - Lemon Drizzle

​Lemon Drizzle Cake

A favourite with my Seniors Lunch Club group, and one I have reserved for our last ever (we very much hope) round of deliveries and audio conference call. We are having two weeks off for Easter and then meeting in person again from mid April.  I will continue to bake and take it along for the meetings, at which we will be able to have a sandwich and a hot drink from our Neighbourhood Centre.

We talked about Easter celebrations. People are looking forward to going to church and have booked to attend church services. Our members who gave up a luxury for Lent are anticipating eating chocolate or cake again.  Memories of rolling eggs – either hard boiled eggs rolled down a hill (pursued by dogs) or rolling chocolate eggs in the house, to symbolise the rolling of the stone away from the mouth of the tomb.  Eggs were painted and eaten or blown and then painted and hung on flowering branches.

We also looked back on the last year of meeting as a telephone conference call. I cannot adequately express how proud we are of our group – members and volunteers together have persevered, sustained each other, contributed good sense and good spirits to our weekly meetings and had a great time and a lot of laughs in the process. We’ve enjoyed talking about topics as diverse as Garden Birds, Lighthouses, Art & Design, Australia and Cartoons. We’ve played Who Am I? games, guessing our characters of animals, Christmas personalities and romantic couples. We’ve read out Limericks, Christmas Cracker Jokes and poems about Snow, and we’ve had birthday, Christmas and VE Day parties. We miss our friend Ruth, who passed away in this year, but we’re grateful to have had her in our group.  Inspirational people.

This recipe is another one from Pam Corbin’s book:  Cakes, River Cottage Handbook No. 8. She says that this recipe is “Men Only” Lemon Drizzle, but I can attest that also women can make it with perfect results.
 
Makes 16 squares            Timings:  90 minutes

• 220g self raising flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 220g caster sugar
  
• 220g butter, softened (I like salted but use what you prefer)
  
• Zest and juice of 2 unwaxed lemons
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 100g granulated sugar

Pre heat your oven to 180°C, and grease and line a 22cm square baking tin.

Beat the flour, baking powder, caster sugar, butter, eggs and lemon zest together into a fluffy batter. Spoon it into the tin and bake for 45-50 minutes until risen, golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning it out. Mix the lemon juice and the granulated sugar in a small bowl, careful not to stir, you don’t want to dissolve the sugar. Prick the surface of the cake all over with a skewer and drizzle the juice/sugar over, letting it sink in.
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The cake will keep 5 days wrapped up in an airtight tin, if you don’t give it all away the day you make it.