Simple home made recipe for lemon cake

Doing your own cooking from scratch is one of the most meaningful things you can do to lead a more sustainable, ethical and self sufficient lifestyle. It is a simple thing that we are encouraged to neglect now that we have microwave meals in plastic trays and bags of pre prepared salad available to us all year around. Eating home made meals is a richly rewarding and nurturing activity.

Added benefits include healthier meals (you know exactly what you are eating), less packaging ending up in the landfill, smaller carbon footprint (the component parts of ready bought food usually adds up to a few thousand air miles) and a chance for you to be creative!

This is a cake recipe I use all the time. It’s easy to do, produces a really light cake and it is so versatile. It’s perfect for a beginner, as it’s virtually fool proof.

Lemon yogurt cake

Ingredients

100g butter
100mls natural yogurt
135g caster sugar (the original recipe calls for 200gms, but the Green’s don’t like things too sweet)
2 eggs
250g Self raising flour (I’m not a fan of self raising flour; personally, I use 250g plain flour and add 3 generous tsps of baking powder)
finely grated zest of 1 lemon

For the icing:

2oz softened butter
4 oz icing sugar
2 tsp fresh lemon juice

Method

Preheat the oven to 180

1- Gently melt the butter.
2- Meanwhile, beat together the yogurt, caster sugar, and eggs in a large bowl.
3- Add the melted butter (make sure it’s not too hot or you will scramble the eggs!), the flour and the lemon zest.
4- Mix really well until you have a smooth batter.
5- Put the cake mix into 2 greased, round cake tins. Any tin from 6-8 inches in diameter is fine.
6- Bake for about 25 minutes. They take from 18-22 minutes in a fan assisted oven.
7- Allow to cool for ten minutes in the tins and then turn out on a wire rack to completely cool down.
8- Make the butter icing by mixing all the ingredients together until you have a smooth ‘cream’. Ice one of the cakes and sandwich them both together.

Variations.

For orange cake you’ll need the finely grated zest of 1 orange

For lime cake you’ll need the finely grated zest of 1 or 2 limes

For vanilla cake, you’ll need a few drops to 1 tsp (depending on the quality of your vanilla) of vanilla

For apple cake, finely chop 2 apples and add to the mix

For lavender cake, add 1 generous tbsp of dried lavender

For chocolate orange cake you’ll need the finely grated zest of 1 orange and a 100g bar of dark chocolate (something decent please like Green and Black’s Maya Gold or a bar of dark Divine!)

For lemon and poppy seed you’ll need the finely grated zest of 1 lemon plus one and a half tablespoons of poppy seeds

for lemon curd and chocolate cake, you’ll need 1/2 pot of lemon curd +1/2 bar white chocolate cut into chunks

You can adjust the icing accordingly. 2 tsp fresh orange juice for orange icing, cocoa powder for chocolate icing etc.