Cook from a Cookbook: Lemony Lemony Lemon Drizzle Cake

Yesterday I had the perfect excuse to break out my newest cookbook and have a go at a recipe I've never tried before. It was my last day at my current job, where tradition demands an offering of cake.

I did a re-run of the Chocolate Crispy Cakes I made for my birthday, since they had proven so popular with my colleagues, and selected the Lemon Drizzle Loaf from my Good Housekeeping Baking Book.

The recipe is actually incredibly simple. I did get a little covered in lemon from all the zesting and juicing, but getting messy is half the fun of baking, don't you agree?

I was ably assisted in my baking by my friend CJ, and copious quantities of Bombay Sapphire. The cake smelled divine when it was in the oven, and cooked to perfection in 40 minutes with a minimum amount of crust burning.

We had to cut the end off to fit it in the box. Honest.

As you can probably see in the photo, I made one small change to the instructions. I didn't have a grater capable of finely grating the lemon zest, so the two lemon's worth of zest that was meant to be grated into the mixture was actually just pared zest, the same as went into the drizzle. I actually quite liked having proper pieces of zest inside the sponge. Which, by the way, was light and delicious and Oh So Lemony. I had quite big lemons, so there was a lot of drizzle, and it soaked right into the sponge and made it all sticky and moist.

It was a real hit with my now-ex-colleagues and I will definitely be making this again!