I is for Icing Sugar

A bit of a break.  Summer holidays are pretty much over but in Dubai, the fact that summer is in its last month or 2, is something to look forward to.  We have had some wonderful holidays to Spain and Mallorca and also Malaysia and Borneo.  And I’m sure a few pictures may feature along the rest of my alphabetical journey as I picked up ideas.  As you will see from a couple of snaps, this was not a diet trip.

Fried croquettes, churros, beers, pastries, sweets featured significantly and every crumb was savoured.  On the flip side, the fresh food was equally if not more appreciated; the peaches, fresh sweet orange juice, seafood, the breakfast hampers in Madrid….

‘I’ was difficult.  The only other ingredient I could think of was Ink as in squid ink.  Although I did taste some delicious squid ink paella on a recent trip to Spain, it’s not something I could imagine myself cooking, let along more than once!  Its pretty demanding on the eye, although I must say the flavour is sweet and subtle.

Icing sugar to most is the key ingredient in ….. yep Icing! Its also referred as confectioners sugar or more appropriately powdered sugar, since that what it is.  It is often used as the sugar component in friends / financiers and is often used dusted over a cake or dessert as decoration or in my case, ‘airbrush’ out any dips or cracks.

To start, I was a bit uninspired by ‘I’ (possibly the reason of my delay in this post), but a lovely and multi talented friend called Georgia, suggested her Lemon Drizzle Cake.  And after sampling another amazing slice (who am I kidding, I had 2.5 slices!) I decided this was it.  She kindly gave me the recipe, adapted from Nadine Ingham of Flour & Stone in Sydney, a favourite of Georgias.  This cake can find pride of place at a ladies morning or afternoon tea, a classy dinner party, as a birthday cake for any age.  It is dense, moist, lemony, sweet and almost impossible to stop eating.  I think and orange version would be also yummy, but why mess with perfection.

Now, I’m not sure my first attempt at this cake did it photo justice, but I had help you see.  From a few little fingers that when drizzling the icing picked up all the cake crumbs and mixed it in the glossy icing.  Either way, it tasted great, I made a large slab version to feed my hungry office colleagues, but a more compact thicker cake might be a bit more generous.  Its also a cake that will do well over a couple of days, if theres any left!

This old fashioned favourite will not disappoint, and thank you Georgia for sharing this special recipe x

Georgia's Lemon Drizzle Cake

 

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Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

1 hour

Total time

1 hour 20 mins

 

PS If you want to try using orange, still keep ⅓ of the citrus as lemon to keep a bit of zing. PPS Feel free to use regular plain flour in place of spelt

Author: adapted from Flour & Stone

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

• 300g unsalted butter, softened
• 100g caster sugar
• 75g brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 230g ground almonds
• 70g spelt flour
• zest of 4 lemons
• 75ml lemon juice
• For the Icing
• 200g icing sugar
• lemon juice, enough to create a thin runny icing to drizzle, allow for 1 lemon

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees celcius
2. Line a cake tin, about 24cm and grease with flour and butter
3. Beat the butter and sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy
4. Add the eggs gradually, scraping the butter mix down the sides to ensure all is incorporated
5. Sieve the flour and almonds together
6. Add the lemon zest and juice together
7. Add the flour mix and lemon mix to the butter and eggs, alternating until the batter is combined.
8. Pour the batter into the tin and bake in the oven at 160 degrees for 10 minutes before turning it down to 140 degrees and baking for up to another 50 minutes, check after 40minutes to see if a skewer comes out clean.
9. When cooked take out of the oven and cool on a rack.
10. Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice gradually until a thin stream of icing can pour off your spoon to drizzle.
11. Drizzle the icing over your cake to your liking, no need to smooth it, it will cover the cake and drizzle off in pools naturally.

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