Lemon Sponge Cake

Lemon Sponge Cake (Pics by June Carvalho)

IT'S one of my favourite quotes: When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade. That's in life. But in the kitchen you can do a tad better with lemons....use the zest of lemon to bake this soft, light and airy tea-time sponge cake with the oh-so-wonderfully refreshing taste of lemon. Afterwards squeeze the hell out of the rest of the lemon to make your lemonade.

The fresh fragrance of lemon makes this cake really special, besides for filling the house with such a wonderful aroma while it's baking away that you get impatient for it to come out of the oven and dig in. The zest is so full of the natural essence of lemon that you don't even need to use synthetic food grade essence to flavour it or to mask the smell of eggs. One lemon zest provides a mildly flavoured cake. For a stronger flavour, use the grated rind of two lemons.

I baked this in a microwave oven, preheated for 15 minutes at 170 degrees C (on convection mode), with a baking time of 30 minutes.

What you need:

300 gms butter
300 gms powdered sugar
300 gms flour
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
Grated zest of 1 lemon

Sieve flour with the baking powder. Cream butter and powdered sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well. Sprinkle the lemon zest. Tip the flour in a little at a time, and fold in gently till all of it is incorporated to form a dropping consistency. If too thick, which is unlikely with these proportions, then add a tablespoon or two of milk and mix in gently.

Put the batter into a greased and dusted cake tin and bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees C for half an hour or till firm and springy to the touch, or till testing skewer comes clean.

Leave it in the pan for ten minutes before inverting on to a wire rack to cool. I know most of my tea cakes look like giant doughnuts, but somehow I seem to reach only for the tube pan in which to bake them.

Finish with a lemon glaze if you like, but pour the glaze over only after the cake has completely cooled.

For the glaze, using a wooden spoon to mix, combine till smooth one cup of sieved icing sugar, two tablespoons of melted butter, one tablespoon each of lemon juice and warm water. Allow to slowly dribble around the sides and set before slicing. The glazed cake above was made on an earlier occasion, which I had carried along for a charming old lady's 80th birthday.