a sec­ond cake!

I still can’t get over it. My bak­ing curse, the one in which I could not prop­erly pro­duce any­thing for dessert, seems to have lifted! Because while I have known for some time that I could pro­duce ONE cake with no dif­fi­culty, today I achieved its suc­ces­sor, and I can­not wait to share it with you.

Now, believe me when I tell you that I fully real­ize an Eng­lish lemon driz­zle cake is child’s play, learned at the knees of their moth­ers, to most Eng­lish peo­ple. It’s the basic, the one you set a bright ten-year-old to make on a nice sunny Sat­ur­day after­noon (well, that descrip­tion in and of itself sounds like fic­tion, the sunny bit) in time for tea. But I am a per­son who had a mother at whose knee I might learn to play Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” or mem­o­rize the com­plete Agatha Christie, but would never learn to cook any­thing because she detested cook­ing so. In fact, the only rea­son I learned to cook at all was to relieve the poor dear of her metaphor­i­cal apron and take over feed­ing the fam­ily so she could get back to needle­point­ing exquis­ite sam­plers while simul­ta­ne­ously refin­ish­ing some enor­mous piece of Indi­ana antique fur­ni­ture. I know, she doesn’t sound real. But she is, thankfully.

I digress. My point is, I have learned cook­ing by trial and error, for the most part, and there have been plenty of errors. Oh boy! I have one reader of this blog who is kind enough to tell me that my errors make her feel more con­fi­dent, and I can absolutely see the point of that. As I get older, I have less and less patience with peo­ple whose pur­pose in life seems to be to make me feel inad­e­quate, and I grav­i­tate more and more to the types who say, “Well done!” This is not to say I can’t accept crit­i­cism, because my writ­ing expe­ri­ences this year have done away with most of what­ever ego I ever had. But I like to be with peo­ple, whether in writ­ing or real life, who are REAL. Peo­ple who screw up and then can dust them­selves off, explain how, and get it right the next time.

That being said, I have made a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of mis­takes in the cre­ation of things to eat at the end of a meal. In part this is because my idea of dessert is another soft shell crab, or meat­ball, per­haps another piece of cheese. But mine is a life that includes a small­ish child to feed, Bake Sales to con­tribute to and the like, and it has become increas­ingly embar­rass­ing to have all din­ner guests say mildly and with com­plete con­fi­dence, “Would you like me to bring dessert?”

Well, I have my apple and banana cake now, Avery’s favorite break­fast of all. And today, the per­fect lemon driz­zle cake came out of my oven. I just can’t tell you how pleased, and relieved, and inspired I am. Per­haps other cakes are in my future. Of course this cake could be a lime driz­zle, or orange driz­zle cake just as eas­ily. A sat­suma and clemen­tine cake! A Meyer lemon cake, let’s get crazy! But for the moment, I give you:

Lemon Driz­zle Cake
(serves 10)

225 grams (one cup) unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
225 grams (one cup) caster (ordi­nary Amer­i­can) sugar
4 eggs
zest of 3 lemons, finely grated
zest of 1 lime, finely grated
225 grams (one cup) self-raising flour, or plain flour with 1 tsp bak­ing pow­der added

driz­zle top­ping
juice of 3 lemons
85 grams (1/3 cup) caster sugar

Beat the but­ter and sugar till soft and fluffy, then beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in zests and flour gen­tly until fully mixed (includ­ing the bak­ing pow­der if you are using plain flour). Tip into a loaf pan and smooth the top flat with a spoon. Lick the spoon.

Bake for about 45 min­utes in an oven set to 185C, 350F. Watch care­fully, because all ovens are dif­fer­ent. Take care not to burn bot­tom or brown top too much. The cake is done when the mid­dle of the top doesn’t jig­gle when pressed gen­tly. Err on the side of bak­ing less rather than longer.

Cool cake enough so that you can han­dle the tin. In the mean­time, mix the lemon juice and sugar till dis­solved. Prick the top of the cake all over with a fork and then SLOWLY driz­zle the mix­ture over it. If you driz­zle too fast, the mix­ture will end up all slid­ing down the sides of the cake. Serve warm.

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Heav­enly! I adapted this recipe from Tana Ram­say, belea­guered wife of Gor­don. I’ve tripled her mea­sure­ments for lemon zest and juice, and added the lime zest. My fam­ily like cit­rus! But feel free to cut down on these if your fam­ily are not lemon freaks.

With my cake safely made, John and I went off in the driz­zly grey Lon­don after­noon to get Avery at school, and Emily traipsed along with us, down the cheery lit­tle expanse of shops down the road from their school. So cozy. We passed the mas­sive build­ing hous­ing the roman­tic swim­ming pool, at which I per­formed my first “recep­tion­ist duty” last night. Such respon­si­bil­ity! Col­lect the keys from school, try to remem­ber the code for the gate and door, turn on the lights, col­lect the cash box, swim­ming caps for sale, sign-in book. And so many swim­mers turned up! Among them, in the gath­er­ing chilly dark­ness, were Annie and Fred and Emily, all chat­ter­ing six­teen to the dozen as they do, partly why I love them: so cheer­ful and busy com­pared to our very quiet (too quiet) house­hold. And a lovely old man who signed his name, ran his fin­ger down the list of names and said, “Oh, dear, oh dear, I’m the 13th swim­mer. You know, my dear, in my block of flats the num­bers go from 12 to 12A to 14. Makes a hash of deliv­er­ies, but…” I offered the infor­ma­tion that many Amer­i­can hotels have no 13th floor. “Well, obvi­ously there IS one, but they skip the num­ber and just go right on to 14,” I bab­bled. He wisely ignored this sally and made his stately way to the pool.

Well, I can tell you that the cake met with the approval of Emily, Avery and John. Being me, nat­u­rally there was a screwup. I had put the bat­ter into the pan and the pan into the oven when I saw the con­tainer of bak­ing pow­der on the counter. Holy s&^t, I had for­got­ten to put it in. I sal­vaged the pan from the oven, poured the bat­ter back into the bowl, added the bak­ing pow­der, put it back in the pan, back in the oven. It’s a very for­giv­ing recipe, because all was FINE. And the driz­zle never glazed in the way that tra­di­tional lemon driz­zle cakes here do. All the driz­zle ran into the cake. Emily diag­nosed too much lemon juice to the amount of sugar, but just as I was plan­ning to try again tomor­row with more sugar, Avery said, “I pre­fer it with no glaze. It can be too sweet, and this ver­sion has just enough BITE.” Thank you, food critic on the hearth.

There you go. Enjoy, because it’s fool­proof and it will brighten up your day, grey or not. And you fam­ily in Indi­ana: throw a cou­ple of snow­balls for me!