Orange and Lemon Drizzle Cake

Not many students will admit to enjoy going to school, but on a Friday, I will happily do so openly... it's 'Cake Friday'! It seems teachers have accepted the fact that concentration levels are dismally low on a friday afternoon, and that a short interlude of cakey hapiness leads to a much-needed energy boost afterwards. Today was my turn to bake and, one again, I saw it as a chance to experiment. I really fancied making a lemon drizzle cake but, with a class full of fairly fussy eaters, I thought I'd need to steer away from anything too sharp or bitter. To do this, I made it a predominantly orange drizzle cake as this gave a slightly sweeter flavour, but still keeping a certain level of sharpness. I did however weaken on the drizzle topping - pure orange juice and sugar was just too sweet, so the addition of a little lemon juice balanced it out... if they didn't like it, I'd eat it! (Fortunately they did like it, so no problems there!)

No picture today I'm afraid - this was all made in a bit of a rush (as I'd forgotten that it was my day until very late the night before). Nevertheless, I'm very pleased with the results.

This recipe is adapted from the Lemon Drizzle Traybake Mary Berry's Baking Bible (again!). Aside from the orange/lemon swap, I also swapped the 2tbsp of milk in the cake mixture for 2tbsp of orange juice to heighten the flavour.

Ingredients:

Cake

110g marg
110g caster sugar
140g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
Zest of one orange (and 2tbsp of the juice)

Crunchy Topping

90g caster sugar
Remaining juice of the orange and the juice of a quarter of a lemon.
 - mix these together and add a splash of water/more juice if it's too stiff to pour onto the cake.


Method:

1. Beat the marg and sugar until light and fluffy
2. Beat in the eggs.
3. Carefully fold in the remaining ingredients.
4. Grease and line a 20cm by 20cm square tray tin (or a loaf tin if you'd prefer a deeper cake - you'd need to watch the cooking time if you did this as it may take longer to cook through the middle).
5. Pour the mixture into the tin and cook in the oven at 160 (fan) or 180 (no fan) for about 30 minutes (until a skewer comes out clean).
6. Most recipes tell you to remove the cake from the tin once cooled, then pour on the lemon/orange/sugar whilst it's cooling on a wire rack. I don't do that - whilst the cake's still slightly warm, remove it from the tin (so that it doesn't stick), then place it back into the tin. Make a number of stabs in the top of the cake to help the drizzle soak in. Now pour over the drizzle mix, right to the edges of the tin and leave to set. Once cooled and set, carefully remove from the tin and serve/store in a cake tin. This method means you won't waste any drizzle mix as it pours off the side, but if you're worried about it sticking, just do it following the original method.

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