Pucker up!!!

When Peter, Paul, and Mary wrote “but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat”, it’s quite obvious that they were born way too soon to have tasted Matt Adlard’s Lemon Loaf Cake.

With a neighbor in hospital who likes lemon, and with a brother and sister-in-law who grow them, I’m always on the lookout for lemon recipes. When I see a loaf cake recipe with lemon zest n the batter, lemon syrup brushed on when fresh out of the oven, and a lemon glaze as the final finish, well, sounds to me like the bases are loaded!!!

Let’s swing for the home run!!! Enjoy!!!

LEMON LOAF CAKE
(Matt Adlard)

INGREDIENTS

For the Cake:
230 g Sugar
Zest 1.5 Lemons + 1/2 Lime
170 g Whole Eggs
115 g Double/Heavy Cream
185 g Cake Flour (or plain/AP flour)
3 g Baking Powder
1-2 tsp Salt
60 g Neutral Oil (Veg or Groundnut)
1 tsp Lemon Extract

For the Syrup:
50 g Lemon Juice
50 g Water
100 g Sugar

For the Icing:
100 g Icing/Powdered Sugar
Lemon Juice

DIRECTIONS

In a bowl, massage the lemon and lime zest into the sugar, then add the eggs and whisk for 3 minutes.

Pour in the cream and whisk.

Sift in the dry ingredients and gently whisk them in.

Whisk in the oil and lemon extract.

Pour the mixture into a greased and floured 2lb loaf tin. Pipe a thin line of butter down the centre and bake at 160C (320F) (non fan assisted) for 65 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

While the cake bakes, boil the syrup ingredients together and set aside.

Once the cake has baked, remove it from the tin and soak it with the syrup. Wrap the cake tightly in cling film and chill it overnight.

The next day, whisk the lemon juice into the icing sugar – just enough until it resembles runny honey. Paint this all over the cake then bake it at 160C (320F) for 3 minutes.

Cool to room temperature before serving.

TIPS and SUGGESTIONS

This is an English recipe, so measurements are metric. Get a scale! And remember, a gram of water (or lemon juice) is equal to 1 ml. (nerd factoid)

Massaging the zest into the sugar is critical to pulling as much lemon flavor out of the zest as possible. What you’re looking for is sugar with a yellow cast to it. And I may have mentioned before, in other recipes, that any time you are adding zest to a recipe, and the recipe also has sugar, use this process. It won’t change the outcome, other than elevating the flavor contribution of the zest.

When whisking the eggs into the sugar, what you’re looking to do is dissolve the sugar, so whisk it until no grains of sugar or visible.

Once you’re to the point of pouring the batter into the loaf pan, the batter will not be stiff, and should pour easily. Be sure to use a spatula to get as much batter as possible into the pan.