Lemon and almond drizzle cake with mascarpone
Quite possibly the best lemon drizzle cake I've ever eaten! This recipe is pretty easy, and if you don't have a piping bag then don't worry about icing it in the way shown in the photographs, you'll be eating it all very quickly anyway.
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 200 g softened butter
- 200 g sugar
- 3 eggs
- 50 g plain flour
- 125 g ground almonds
- Zest of 2 lemons
For drizzle:
- 70 g sugar
- Juice of 2 lemons
For the mascarpone icing:
- 300 g mascarpone
- 4 tbsp icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Toasted flaked almonds
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Line the base of a round 20cm cake tin with baking parchment and grease the sides with butter.
- Tip your softened butter and the sugar into a mixing bowl and beat together with an electric whisk until soft, pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated.
- Add the flour, ground almonds and lemon zest and gently fold together. Tip into the prepared tin and bake for 30-40 minutes.
- Meanwhile make the drizzle by mixing together the lemon juice and sugar.
- Once the cake is golden brown, springy in the centre and a skewer inserted into the sponge comes away clean it is ready. While it is hot, pierce the sponge all over its surface with a skewer or fork and spoon over the drizzle, spreading it all over the cake. Leave to cool in the tin.
- Remove from the tin once cold. In a bowl beat together the icing ingredients until smooth then either spread or pipe splodges over the cake. Garnish with some toasted flaked almonds. Dig in.