Cake part 1: Lower-fat lemon drizzle cake

I can barely remember when I last made a cake. I've admired the activities on Great British Bake-off with interest, but they haven't stirred me to create Sachertorte or Victoria sponge. I even met a man who takes pride in making French-style macarons, those dainty jewel-like objects in pastel colours, which possibly have the greatest ratio of effort to each mouthful of any food I can think of. All I could think of is, why? (Something about the need to master something really difficult, I think, although if I had that urge I'm not sure I'd use it for patisserie.)

Lower-fat lemon drizzle cake, with raspberries

Anyway, it was a colleague's 50th birthday this week, and somehow I found myself promising to make a cake. And then I discovered it was another colleague's birthday the day before, so, not wanting her to feel left out, I decided I had better make two. But this person is on a diet. What to do? Thankfully, BBC Good Food came to my rescue, with a recipe for lighter lemon drizzle cake. There were even reviews, so I could allay my fears that a lower-fat cake would be deeply disappointing. I had to buy several of the ingredients specially, and spent a bit of time hunting down the polenta.

But I have to say it was all worth it - there was no hint of its low-fat nature. It was light, lemony, and luscious, if I do say so myself. I made two - a round one for work (pictured) and a smaller loaf cake for home. The round one did sink a little in the middle, which may have been to do with the fact that I opened the oven a couple of times to check on the cakes and remove the smaller one. I added some raspberries for a bit of extra glamour, and they went really well with the cake.

I've tweaked and clarified the original recipe slightly, especially with regards to the drizzle, which I've made easier, but feel free to use the original here.

My lemon zest tip: I always find grating lemon zest leaves me with more of it stuck in the grater than in my dish. If you've got a really good grater this may not be an issue, but otherwise, I recommend peeling strips of zest with a very sharp knife. Then if you've got a food processor or similar with a small bowl, put all the zest in it and whizz it until the pieces are as small as possible. If you don't have a machine to do this, you can chop it very finely by hand, but this may be time-consuming.
A lemon juice tip: Heat the lemons briefly in the microwave until they are warm, to maximise the amount of juice you can get out of them.

Ingredients

75ml vegetable or sunflower oil, plus extra for the tin
175g self-raising flour
1½ tsp baking powder
50g ground almonds
50g polenta
finely grated or chopped zest 2 lemons (see tip above)
140g golden caster sugar
2 large eggs
225g natural yogurt (I used low fat - 1.5% fat)

For the lemon drizzle
85g caster sugar
juice 2 lemons (about 5-6 tbsp) (see second tip above)

Method

Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.

Lightly oil a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking parchment.

Put the flour, baking powder, ground almonds and polenta in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the lemon zest and sugar.

Beat the eggs in another bowl, then stir in the yogurt. Tip this mixture into the first mixing bowl along with the oil, then briefly and gently stir with a large metal spoon so everything is just combined, without overmixing. Spoon the mixture into the tin and level the top.

Bake for 40 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cover loosely with foil for the final 5-10 mins if it starts to brown too quickly.

For the drizzle, just mix the sugar and lemon juice, and stir well until as much of the sugar is dissolved as possible. Remove the cake from the oven and while it is still warm, use a skewer to make lots of small holes all over the top of the cake. Slowly spoon over the lemon syrup and let it soak in. Try to go right to the edge with the drizzle, brushing the edges if necessary with the last of the syrup. Allow to cool in the tin.

More to follow on my second cake of the week...

The cake again - with added ribbon!