Contents:
- Editor's welcome
- David Marshall Red Arrow engineer
- Feel Good Picnics are highlight of summer
- Hanson Springs celebrates 60 years
- New independent vet practice opens in Milnrow
- Noise phobias in dogs
- Lemon drizzle cake »
- GEM Appeal Strawberry Sparkle Lunch
- Budding photographer’s snap of Ellenroad Engine House Steam Museum wins monthly contest
- Hairdressing trend - bubble bob
- Town hall restoration: new stained glass windows for Mayor’s Dining Room
- Rochdale Classic Car & Bike Show
- A short history of Hare Hill House: The Newall Family
- Success for Hollingworth Lake Rowing Club at the European Championships
- Tour of Britain
- Health and wellbeing during Metal season
- Garlic chilli chicken with parmesan cream, gnocchi and seasonal tenderstem broccoli
- “It’s right on your doorstep and it deserves to be romanticised.”
- How late is too late to start saving for retirement?
- Rochdale scent company inspires employee to write children’s novel
- Rochdale Masonic Hall
- New specialised dementia garden launched at Springhill Hospice
- A typical week for a football lawyer
- Silver for Petrus at Tatton
- New ‘Chatty Café’ to reduce loneliness and social isolation opens in Rochdale town centre
- Local independent fashion retailers shortlisted for Drapers Awards
Autumn 2023Lemon drizzle cake
by Natasha Brown - owner of Brown’s Cakes
This lemon cake combines a wonderful zesty filling and the traditional crunchy lemon drizzle to make a delicious teatime treat.
Ingredients
- 5 eggs
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 340g self-raising flour
- 285g caster sugar
- 285g Stork margarine
For the drizzle
- Juice of 1 lemon
- Approx. 80g granulated sugar
For the filling
- Lemon curd
- 125g softened butter
- 200g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line two 8” round cake tins.
We use the all-in-one method for most of our cakes; it’s simple and easy.
For best results, start with all your ingredients at room temperature. Put the eggs, self-raising flour, caster sugar, margarine and lemon zest in a large bowl and beat well with an electric mixer. Give the batter a really good beat until the mixture goes pale and is very soft.
When well-beaten, divide between the two tins and smooth down. Bake in the centre of the oven for approx. 35 minutes.
While the cake is baking, mix the juice of 1 lemon with twice as much granulated sugar (for example, my lemon juice weighed 36 grams so I added 72 grams of sugar.) Stir these together to dissolve the sugar.
Check the cakes are cooked by inserting a wooden skewer and checking that it comes out clean: if they’re not baked, keep them in the oven and keep checking every five minutes until they are done.
Once baked, take them out of the oven and pierce the top of one of the cakes multiple times with a skewer. Slowly pour the drizzle over this cake, covering the whole top whilst it is still warm, then leave the cakes to cool.
To make the buttercream, beat the softened butter with the icing sugar (this can be messy so you may want to cover the bowl with a tea towel whilst mixing but be careful).
When the buttercream is combined and fluffy, stir in a couple of teaspoons of lemon curd. Taste to check you’ve put enough in to give a light lemon flavour.
Once the cakes are cool, cut the rounded top off the cake that doesn’t have drizzle on as this will be the base of the finished cake.
Spread a generous amount of lemon curd over the flat top of this cake then add a thick layer of buttercream.
Place the second cake with the drizzle on the top and give the cake a gentle dusting of icing sugar to finish.
Delicious!