Perfect Sunday Damp Lemon and Almond Cake

This really is the perfect sunday afternoon recipe! And its definitely the antidote to fancy schmancy, fussy cakes featuring my now enemy, fondant! This cake is moist to the point of damp (see name of cake!), zestily almondy, refreshing and comforting all at once.

Here’s the recipe! Its adapted (I put in more ground almonds as I LOVE THEM) from one thats in Nigella’s cookbook How to be a domestic goddess. As someone who uses the internet for everything, I googled to find a recipe that fit the cake in my head, found this nigella recipe and then realised I did have the cookbook it was in! Although still probably quicker than reading through 25 cookbooks!

You’ll need

• 225g very soft butter (zap it in the microwave if its not completely soft)
• 225g golden caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 50g plain flour
• 280g ground almonds
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• zest and juice of two lemons (unwaxed)

As with most cakes, start by creaming the butter and sugar until its completely combined and light and fluffy (I choose to believe this is a good arm exercise). Add the eggs one at a time with a quarter of the flour each go and beat to combine. Then add the almond extract, vanilla, ground almonds, and lemony goodness. This is the point at which the batter starts to smell AMAZING. You may need to eat some of it, just to be sure of its awesomeness though. Totally normal.

Scrape out the batter into a greased cake tin – I used a loaf tin as you can see in the picture but you could use any kind you want. Pop in the oven at about 180 degrees (I was cautious as my oven can be a little over enthusiastic so I put it in at about 160 as the top of the cake browned a long time before the middle was cooked). Mine took over an hour, probably 65-70 minutes altogether.

And it was amazing. You could easily customise this cake by replacing the lemon with oranges, limes (zesty!) or a combination of fruits.