Orange (or lemon) drizzle cake
A couple of years ago, when I was travelling in Scotland, every cafe offered a lemon drizzle cake. I thought it was a particularly Scottish cake (even though Scotland is not known for its citrus), but I was wrong. Turns out it’s much more an English cake, and there are many versions. Of course. Most of them involve lemon icing, and I’m not an icing person. Then I went to the wonderful Morning Morning Cooking Club’s latest book, Now for Something Sweet, and there was a lemon syrup cake. The recipe originated with Evelyn Rose, the cookery editor of the London Jewish Chronicle. I have a copy of Evelyn Rose’s The Complete International Jewish Cookbook (Pan Books, 1978). The cake, called Luscious Lemon Cake, is a one-bowl cake - that is, everything goes into the mixer together. I have adapted the recipe slightly, and I used seville orange rather than lemon.
Ingredients:
120g butter, melted and cooled, 170g caster sugar, 170g self-raising flour, 4 tablespoons of milk (or buttermilk), 2 large eggs, grated rind of one orange, pinch of salt.
Heat the oven to 175C. Butter a loaf tin (23x18) and line the bottom with baking paper.
Put all the ingredients in a bowl, and beat well for about three minutes. Pour into baking tin, and bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Set the tin on a cooling cake, poke well with a skewer, and while the cake is hot, pour over a syrup made of the juice of a seville orange (or two lemons) and 80g icing sugar.
When the cake is cold, unmould it. Decorate with icing sugar and slices of orange that have been blanched.