Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring

Thursday 4 August 2011

Rainy day activities...

So after the heatwave comes the rain - and what can we do with those long dreary days and little people to amuse?  An all-time favourite is baking a cake, and a favourite of the ilovegorgeous girls is lemon-yoghurt-poppyseed cake with a crunchy lemon topping - yum. Here's what you need:

For the cake:
100g softened butter
150g golden caster sugar
150g SR flour
1tsp baking powder
2 large eggs (don't forget to buy Free Range or Organic, and never from caged birds!)
2tbsp natural yoghurt
1tbsp poppy seeds
Zest of 1 large lemon

For the topping:
Juice of the lemon
50g golden caster sugar
50g granulated or demarara sugar


And here's how to make it:


First take a 20cm cake tin and grease it, lining the base with a circle of baking paper.

Put the eggs in a bowl and whisk well, add the flour, baking powder, sugar and soft butter and beat well with a wooden spoon. Drop in the yoghurt to slacken the mixture, stir in the lemon zest and poppy seeds and turn the mixture into the tin.

Bake at 180 degrees, set your timer for 40 minutes. And meanwhile do the washing up! Then put the 50g of the two sugars into a small bowl or jug and pour the lemon juice over the top to soak in to the sugar.

When the timer rings, insert a skewer into the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean then the cake's ready! Leave it to cool for about five minutes in the tin, then, while it's still in the tin, pour the lemon-sugar mixture over the top and spread about so it covers the top. When the cake's cool turn it out and enjoy. It's the best lemon cake we've ever tasted!

To change things around a bit why not make this recipe into cupcakes for a birthday or for a lovely present for a friend or Granny? You can make the topping into a lovely lemony white icing by replacing the granular sugars with icing sugar - you can play around with sugarpaste flowers, crystallised flowers, sparkles and sprinkles. Or, you know, just eat the cake plain and delicious as it is!

We know the summer holidays can be long... fun, but long... and with this in mind we are currently designing a  fabulous and gorgeous downloadable project that we will put on our blog very soon...  watch this space!

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