Caroline’s Lemon Cake
My mother-in-law’s lemon cake recipe used to be my go-to lemon cake recipe. However, since she sadly died a few years ago, I’ve had a change of heart. And now I’m a huge fan of Mary Berry’s GSDT Lemon Victoria.
But this recipe served me well for many years, and has the added bonus of being up-scalable in a very useful manner. I’m a firm believer that birthdays and other occasions call for decadence of some sort, and a three tier cake if at all feasible. And Mary Berry’s cakes tend to come out rather large and fluffy already, so much so that three tiers would be rather piggy.
The recipe below makes just the two tiers, but three is very feasible if you do the maths (➗2, x 3).
This is a delicate lemon cake, I’ve often toyed with adding zest of two lemons rather than three as I do like my lemon cakes zingy. But that’s up to you.
Caroline’s recipe calls for a 7½” tin. You’ll be disappointed if you try and use an 8″ tin instead. And quite happy if you use a 7″. But it’s best in a 7½” if you have one hidden away.
I tested Caroline’s new oven with this recipe many years ago now … the new oven was never my favourite, and turned out to be rather temperamental. Perhaps the slightly sunk in the middle (covered with icing) cake and decorated with mini marshmallows (not the best flavour combination) should have been taken more seriously as an omen of things to come.
Caroline's Lemon Cake
Ingredients
- 6 oz Soft margarine, such as Stork, Pure Baking or Flora Buttery or Butter at room temperature (Don't even start if your butter is straight out the fridge. It has to be room temperature. And don't try to soften it in the microwave. This rarely goes well.)
- 6 oz Caster Sugar
- 3 medium Eggs - about 2oz each in weight
- 6 oz Gluten-free self raising flour (I always use Doves Freee)
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- 1 tbsp Milk, rice milk or other dairy alternative) (I'd always recommend using Rice milk. It's not as overpowering as other flavours, does a great job and fewer people have an intolerance to it.)
- 1 Grated zest of a lemon. Save the juice for the icing!
- 1 tsp Lemon extract
Butter cream icing
- 3 oz Butter
- 6 oz Icing sugar
- Lemon juice
Dairy Free 'buttercream equivalent' icing (yes, I know I've switched to metric. Hey ho, that's how my brain does this recipe).
- 70 g Flora Buttery or other buttery tasting dairy free margarine
- 50 g Trex or other vegetable shortening
- 300 g Icing sugar
- Lemon juice
- 1 tbsp Milk or dairy-free milk alternative e.g. rice milke
Instructions
Cake
- Heat your oven to 170°C. Grease and line two 7½" cake tins.
- Blend maragine and sugar food processor until well mixed, light and fluffy
- Add eggs, one by one. If needs be, and a tbsp of flour with each egg to stop the mixture splitting.
- Add the flour, grated lemon zest, and lemon extract.
- Blend until mixed
- Divide equally between the two cake tins and smooth the top
- Bake for approx. 35 minutes.
Icing
- With a hand mixer, mix the softened butter (or margerine and Trex) until smooth.
- Add the icing sugar tablespoon by tablespoon, adding the lemon juice in after about 3 tablespoon's worth of icing sugar. Be gentle with the mixer, or you'll cover yourself and the kitchen in a cloud of white powder.
- Add the milk or milk alternative as needed until your icing is at the desired consistency. If you are making the dairy free version, your icing is likely to be a little runnier, so go easy on adding the milk alternative.
