Lemon Poppy Seed Drizzle Cake

One of the biggest things you need to know about me is how much I love to bake. Bakin’ is ma thang (making it cool for you ya). It’s therapeutic, it can be as easy as you want it to be and you get to eat the product…..seriously, what could be better?!

I like to experiment quite a lot with my baking but I love a good old classic too. The Lemon poppy seed drizzle cake is a bit of a twist of a classic. It’s a really simple recipe that really can’t go wrong and you can adjust the lemon level to your taste. Personally I love a cake that zings!

You will need:

For the Cakey bit:
170g unsalted butter

170g caster sugar

3 large eggs
170g self raising flour
Zest of 2 lemons
A tablespoon of poppy seeds

The yummy bit:
Juice of the 2 previously zested lemons (Alter this amount to your taste!)
110g powdered sugar (you may need to alter this according to the amount of juice you use)

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees and grease a loaf tin (the tin I used was 22cm).

Get your instruments ready!

For the cakey bit just use your normal creaming method. Make sure your butter is soft before you add your sugar then beat until it is smooth.

Add in your eggs, now normally I would add a little flour in with each egg to avoid the mixture splitting but I just plonked my eggs in and gave the mixture a really good beating, this gets the mixture lighter resulting in a fluffier cake. If you add the flour in and beat it too much some bad science* goes on and makes the mixture heavier.

Once your eggs are in sieve in your flour and gently fold it in to the mixture.

I love the way cake mixture swirls!

Once it is more or less folded in pop in the lemon zest and the poppy seeds then give it all on good ol’ final beating.

Pop the mixture into your tin and put in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes.

While you are waiting for your cake to bake you can make up your drizzle. Juice the lemons you used for zest and add in the icing sugar. This stage is pretty dependent on how you want your cake to turn out…..if you want more of a icing glaze add more sugar, I prefer the drizzle to go all the way into the cake and just a little bit to sit on top, but it’s your party; drizzle how you want to!

When you think the cake is done give it a poke in the centre with a skewer, if it comes out clean you’re good to go. If it isn’t done and your worried about the top getting to dark cover it with some foil.

Once the cake is done take your skewer and prod lots of holes into your cake, make sure some go all the way through (to make sure the drizzle can get down and dirty with the cake).

Oof! Check out that bad boy!

Pour your drizzle over the warm cake and then set aside to cool…..unless you can’t wait, in which case dive right in!

*The bad science bit…….if you work flour too much in a wet mixture the gluten strands get shorter which results in the mixture tightening and not allowing the mix to rise properly which leads to a dry, flat cake. I hate flat cake.