Lemon Drizzle Cake

As you may have guessed, I do a fair amount of baking, but there is one recipe that people request more than any other: lemon drizzle cake. It's a fairly simple cake, lifted to incredible heights by the fact that you soak the cake in a syrup made simply of lemon juice and icing sugar. It is lovely both paired with a cup of tea or presented as pudding, always feeling light thanks to the citrus content.

On this occasion I was making it as a thank you for special someone who hemmed my husband's trousers and gave us chocolate for our Rocky Road. My children had been excited to see me getting out baking ingredients, and were disappointed when I immediately explained the cake was for someone else. However, when I explained that person was the one who made our recent Rocky Road possible, they were in full agreement that said person deserved cake!

I got started once the kids were in bed, meaning everything was not at room temperature. 

This was one hard block of butter. If you are skilled, you might manage to just soften it slightly on a low setting in your microwave, but I always end up with a molten crater and hard edges when I try doing that, so instead...

I beat the butter into submission. It took a good few minutes, but eventually the friction did the job just fine.

Then in went the caster sugar. Granulated sugar in the USA has the same consistency as caster sugar here...why is that? Granulated sugar here is slightly chunkier.

Ah, nice and creamed.

Then lemon zest was added so it looked like this.

Then the eggs went in one at a time. I used to just always add the eggs all at once, in spite of instructions saying to do it one at a time. Then I read an article in Cooks Illustrated that said you do in fact get a superior cake if you do them one at a time and you'll spend less time overall mixing it (it takes fewer strokes to do it one at a time). So now, when I remember to, I do them one at a time. It's all very scientific here in the Calwell kitchen.

At this point the mixture looked a bit curdled and gross. That's normal in my experience.

I trusted myself that it would get better.

And saying a small prayer, added the flour.

Once that improved it, in went some milk. The photo at the top shows a whole milk container, but it actually contained semi skimmed milk, as my other milk jug split slightly, spilling milk all over my stairwell. I managed to save enough to decant into the jug above and have been fooling everybody with it since. Annoyingly it was also just after the stair cleaners had visited.

There - a nice, smoothish batter. It went into a lined loaf tin, but I forgot about taking a photo until it was in the oven, and I'm not about to show you what the inside of my oven looks like.

It ain't pretty, I can tell you that.

While it baked, I juiced a couple of lemons. At the moment, this piece of plastic is one of my son's favourite toys.  Toddlers...

On went some icing sugar...and some caster sugar, since I ran out of icing sugar. Oops.

I stirred it to combine it and then heated it briefly in the microwave to help most of it dissolve. If it doesn't all dissolve, that's fine - it leaves a nice crusty sugary glaze on the top when that happens.

Out came the cake.

I then took a toothpick (skewers work better, or simply a sharp knife will do) and poked holes all over the top.

Like so.

Then I poured on the syrup.

And it oozed in all over the top, drifting down the sides. I then left it overnight to cool and soak all the juices through.

The next day I brought it in and presented it to my colleague. She immediately announced that a whole cake was too much for her, that she would end up eating it in one sitting.

So instead, she chopped it in half.

Because it's totally ok to eat half of this cake. Not that I would know what that's like. Ahem.

She gave half of it to another colleague who gets really excited about my baking. REALLY excited.

You can see how the syrup drenched the middle of the cake here - heaven on a plate I tell you.

Nigella, you're the best.

Lemon Drizzle Cake (adapted from recipe for Lemon Syrup Loaf Cake in How to be a Domestic Goddess)

Preheat oven to 180C/350F

125g butter
175g caster sugar 
2 eggs
zest 1 lemon
175g self-raising flour
4 Tbsp milk

for syrup:
juice 2 lemons
100g powdered sugar

1 loaf tin - preferably lined for ease of cake removal

Put butter in large bowl.  Beat and mash and mix with wooden spoon until fairly fluffy.  Add sugar and beat and mash and mix until a lighter shade of fluffy and even consistency throughout.Add zest & eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.  Fold in flour then mix in milk.  Pour into loaf tin and bake.  Test after 45 minutes (knife should come out clean). Meanwhile, heat lemon juice and sugar until sugar is dissolved (either on the hob or in short bouts in the microwave).  Once the cake is out of the oven, punch loads of holes in it with a knife or skewer and pour the syrup over the top.  Leave to cool in the tin so all the juices are absorbed fully.

Rich Rolled Lemon Sugar Cookies

Oooh...only a few days until Christmas, and we all know what that means...

COOKIES!!!

Vast quantities of cookies, of an insane number of variations, moment on your lips, lifetime on your hips cookies. They might be out of a tin, or removed from a posh box, or shaken out of a bag, or...

You will decide that you want to fill your house/apartment/flat/strange foreign home with the smell of sugar, butter, and eating-your-troubles-away goodness by BAKING THEM YOURSELF. And, since it's Christmas and all, you'll decide you want to use fun shapes too.

Now your first instinct may be to make gingerbread. I usually do, and to tell the truth I am usually disappointed as gingerbread is never really as good as ginger snaps, is it? It isn't spicy or chewy enough, and though the smell is good, I just never feel the cookies themselves stand well enough on their own. Lemon icing for decorating helps, but really, why not just make ginger snaps instead and save your fancy cutters for these.

These are sugar cookies, but better than just regular ones. These are rich rolled cookies, adapted from Joy of Cooking. Speaking of that book, mine is looking rather sad, don't you think?

You can just about make out the big "Joy" in the middle of the spine there. Yes, it's seen a lot of use over the years, so I decided that since I'm missing a few pages I'd get a fresh copy as a back-up. Well, turns out my version, the angicised version that first came out in 1946 (!!) is out of print. Thankfully, the internet (and with the help of the family who write it and who is very active on facebook) I was able to track down a used copy without too much trouble. It turns out quite a few recipes are different from in the American edition, so I'll be careful not to just lazily copy and paste stuff in the future.

But this recipe looks the same in both. It's the recipe I used as a child, and a recipe that I convinced a few of my friends' families to use as well, as they all had a copy of this cookbook on their shelves too but hadn't known how good this recipe is.  However, I do have one small alteration: lemon zest. Lemon zest makes lots of recipes better, and this is no exception. Most people get tired of plain vanilla cookies this time of year, so adding the lemon lifts them a little and makes everyone who tastes them feel clever, because then they get to say "oooh...this isn't just plain vanilla, is that LEMON, by any chance?" and you can say, "yes, you're right!" and they can smile and feel smug about their superior tastebuds.  

Works every time, I tell you.

The list of ingredients is relatively short: butter, sugar, egg, baking powder, salt, vanilla, flour, and lemon.

First, I took the butter and put it in a bowl and bashed it for a while. I did this because, as usual, I didn't remember to take my butter out of the fridge in advance to get it to room temperature.  Whenever I do remember, I end up having some domestic catastrophe which means I don't get to bake and I've left the butter out and let it get mushy for no reason. Or I forget I remembered to leave it out and take butter out of the fridge anyway. So yeah, I generally try to just keep it in the fridge and take my aggression out on it once it's in the bowl. 

The recipe calls for 225 grams of butter. That may seem like an odd amount until you realize that two American sticks of butter, or one cup of butter, is 225-230 grams. You figure these things out when you read a lot of converted recipes.

Once I bashed it a bit I added some sugar and bash it some more. You could use an electric mixer here, but I don't. Less noisy this way.

Here I've pretty much creamed it together. You'll understand why I say "pretty much" when you see a photo later on.

Then I added the zest of a lemon.

And a happy egg. My egg lady also raises turkeys and was a bit dazed at the market today. Apparently she didn't go to bed last night thanks to all the Christmas turkey orders.  At her age, you wouldn't think she'd be able to poulet off!

Sorry.  Ahem.   

Yes, an egg.

Then in went vanilla.

This got stirred up and looked like a curdled mess so I started checking the recipe to make sure I was doing it right.

Flour, salt, and baking powder will make it better.

So then I stirred it together, but it was difficult as I was holding a baby. He was in a grabbing mood, so I passed him to my husband and said "just take him for literally one minute while I finish stirring the dough!"  True to my word, I quickly finished mixing the dough and threw the mix into the fridge without taking a photo.

It looked like sugar cookie dough.

Then, the next day (yes, it was meant to be an hour or so later, but it was the next day instead) I took it out, put it on some parchment, and bashed it with a rolling pin to flatten it.  See those white spots here and there? That's cause I didn't cream the butter and sugar well enough. I wouldn't win a baking competition, but that just means I don't have to give any cookies to a snooty judge who thinks that's important. THEY'LL STILL TASTE FINE.

Then I roll it to about as thick as I like my cookies...I'm guessing about a 1/4 inch?  I put parchment paper on top while I'm rolling them too.

Then my daughter took a photo while I growled in my mom cardigan.

These are the shapes we selected from my collection. I should probably get some more.

My daughter avoided photographing my head. I felt like the nanny in Muppet Babies.

Then we simply pressed them out.

And put them on my recycled parchment (I think I made ginger snaps but used the other side of the paper for them).

Then I baked them until they were just getting the tiniest, teeniest, eensie-weensiest bit brown at the edges, about 7 minutes. This meant they still are a bit chewy in the middle.

Never knowingly overbaked, that's my motto.

I sometimes use a quick lemon icing for these, but on this occasion I just stacked them and gave them away to teachers and neighbours. Apart from the quality control cookies, of course. One has to maintain standards.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Lemon Rich Rolled Sugar Biscuits adapted from Joy of Cooking ISBN 0684851466

Beat until well blended

225 unsalted butter, softened 

120g caster sugar

Add and mix until well combined

zest 1 lemon

1 egg

1/4 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Stir in until well blended and smooth

325g plain flour

Divide dough in half and place each half between large sheets of greaseproof paper.  Refrigerate until firm but not hard, ideally.  

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F.  Remove dough from fridge and roll out dough until it is as thin/thick as you like your cookies. Cut with fun shapes, using tetris skills to minimize dough wastage and re-rolling dough.  Place on parchment covered baking sheets about an inch apart.  If desired, sprinkle lightly with coloured sprinkles. Bake for 6-9 minutes, rotating halfway through baking to ensure even baking, removing from oven when they start to colour at the edges. 

Cool on rack. Except for the one you "accidentally" broke on the way to the rack.  Just eat that one.