April recipe: Lemon cake

Lemon cake

The sharp, bright taste of lemon seems especially well suited to brisk spring days. This simple lemon cake is quick to make and always turns out well.  It is delicious served plain, or if you fancy something a bit more elaborate, it can be sliced in half and filled with lemon curd and/or lemon buttercream.

Here’s the recipe.

Lemon cake

8 oz (approx. 250 g) self-raising flour

3 oz (approx 75 g) light brown soft sugar

4 oz (approx 100 g) butter

1 egg

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoons) demerara sugar, optional

Grease a deep cake tin about 6 inches (approx 15 cm) in diameter.

Rub the butter into the flour and sugar until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Beat the egg, and add it to the mixture along with the lemon zest and lemon juice.

Mix well until smooth.

Put the mixture in the prepared cake tin and level the top. Sprinkle the top with 2 teaspoons of demerara sugar, if liked. This will give the cake a crunchy top.

Bake in a moderately hot oven at about 170-180 C for about 45 minutes to an hour until the cake is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack.

If liked, you can cut the cake in half horizontally and sandwich the halves back together with lemon curd and/or lemon buttercream.  Or you can serve the cake plain, which is what I normally do.

The cake will keep about a week in an airtight tin, and freezes well (freeze it plain, without the buttercream/ lemon curd filling).