Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake

Zing up your tea time with this lemon drizzle loaf cake. This classic English lemon drizzle loaf has lemon in the batter, lemon in the drizzle, and lemon in the icing. It comes together with a few simple ingredients, and it’s full of zest and lemon flavour. Preheat your oven to 180C/ 350F, grate the zest of two lemons, squeeze 20 millilitres of fresh orange juice, and set them aside.

Add 200 grams of softened room-temperature butter and 200 grams of caster sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl, and then cream them together until really light and fluffy. Break three eggs in a medium-sized mixing bowl and add 50 millilitres of milk and half a teaspoon of lemon juice. Give it a whisk to break the eggs, then add the egg mixture to the butter in three additions while mixing on low speed. In a separate bowl, sift 200 grams of self-raising flour, a teaspoon of salt, and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda.

If you don’t have self-raising flour, you can substitute it with plain or all-purpose flour and baking powder, so for every 100 grams of all-purpose flour, you will add a teaspoon of baking powder.

Add the flour mixture into the butter mixture while mixing on low speed, and once it has all come together, stop mixing and use a spatula to finish the mixing. You do not want to overmix the batter. Grease and line 2 pound loaf tin, then pour the batter into the tins and smooth the top, then bake in the preheated oven for 50 to 60 minutes. While baking the cake, prepare the drizzle by adding 60 grams of caster sugar into a small bowl and two tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon.

Give that a good stir until all of the sugar has dissolved. Once the cakes are baked and out of the oven, poke holes all over the cake right to the bottom then spoon the lemon drizzle over the cake and let it cool completely.

For the icing, sift 50 grams of icing sugar into a small bowl, add two teaspoons of lemon juice, and stir until smooth. Remove the cake from the tin, place it over a wire rack, and drizzle the icing all over it.