For the birthday cake I made a delicious lemon cake, and it really was so yummy! By request, here is the recipe:
Lemon Syrup Cake
This cake is very easy to make, and it is just delicious. If at all possible, serve it still slightly warm from the oven with a dollop of thick cream. This has a wonderful lemon flavour, and don't worry about the syrup, it isn't either to citrusy or too sweet: it really is just perfect.
Ingredients
Cake
melted butter
250g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
grated zest of 1 lemon
200g caster sugar
250g softened unsalted butter
4 large eggs
Syrup
2/3 cup caster sugar
juice of 1 lemon
Preheat oven to 160'c. Line a 24cm springform tin with baking paper. Brush paper & sides of tin well w/ melted butter. Stir flour, salt & baking powder into a bowl.
In a food processor, blitz (really, really blitz) the lemon zest & sugar in a food processor, then add the softened butter until thick & pale.
Add 2 of the eggs, pulse well to combine, then the1/2 flour, the last 2 eggs, then the rest of the flour, pulsing to combine well in between each addition.
Tip the batter into the prepared tin, and bake in an oven for approx 1 hour.
To make the syrup, dissolve the sugar in the lemon juice in a saucepan over medium heat.
Cool the cake for a few minutes in the tin before allowing to cool on a rack. Pierce the cake in a few places before pouring the syrup over, so that it really soaks in.
This is from Stephanie Alexander's seminal book: 'The Cook's Companion'.
She recommends allowing the syrup-soaked cake to cool completely before serving.
If this were a cake for afternoon tea or similar, serving the cake cool is what I would do.
As I noted above, last night I served it warm w/ a dollop thick cream, and it was fantastic. I'd do it this way if you were after a more 'dessert' type of treat.
Wine Match!
This is lovely with a simple glass of champagne for a tres elegant afternoon tea or dessert. A nice riesling could be good too - ask your bottle shop to recommend one to work with lemon flavours; you wouldn't want a riesling high in sugar as that would just be overwhelming I think. If you wanted the ultimate citrus hit, you could serve this with a glass of chilled lemoncello.
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