Lemon Cake

Light, tangy, sweet, delicious!

View Instructions

Servings

many

Ready In:

40 min

Calories:

it’s a cake!

Good For:

me

About this Recipe

By: Sharyn

Lovely lemons! This is great by itself or serve with thick cream.

Ingredients

390 g plain flour (3 cups)
2 tspn baking powder
½ tspn salt
400 g sugar (2 cups)
240 g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
4 eggs
1 cup milk (240ml)
2 tblspn lemon zest
2 tblspn poppy seeds (optional)

butter and fine bread crumbs or nut flour to prepare the pan

Glaze:

⅓ cup lemon juice
¾ cup sugar

When mixing a cake, the order in which you combine the ingredients and how well you beat those ingredients, will effect how tough and dense the cake will be.

If you want a light cake, the rule of thumb is to add the flour to the prepared fat (in this case butter and sugar) so that the flour is ‘waterproofed’ before other liquids are added. This will prevent gluten development and should make a fine, tender crumb.

Add liquids to flour/fat combination last and quickly, keeping mixing to a minimum. And once mixed transfer to pan and oven promptly.

Another tip is to use cake flour instead of all-purpose, it is a low protein flour that produces less gluten.

Step by Step Instructions

Step 1

Do the prep jobs first:

Preheat the oven to 170°C conventional or 155°C fan forced.
Line a 20 cm square baking tin with greaseproof paper, or
butter a 23cm (9″) tube/bundt pan and coat with the nut flour (or bread crumbs).

Step 2

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. You can now mix in optional poppy seeds. Set aside.

Step 3

Zest the lemons.
Rub the lemon zest through the sugar, immediately upon zesting, to capture the oils.
Cream the butter and lemon sugar together.

Step 4

Whip the eggs well; beat them into the other ingredients alternately with the dry ingredients, and lastly add the milk.

Step 5

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top of the batter. Bake 1¼ hours, or until the cake tests done.

Step 6

While the cake bakes, make the glaze.
Warm the juice and sugar in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until all of the sugar is dissolved. Cover and remove from heat.
When the cake is done, immediately unmold the cake onto a cake rack and apply the glaze with a pastry brush to the top and sides of the cake until it is all absorbed.