If life gives you limes: Lime Syrup Loaf Cake

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If life gives you lime, make lime syrup cake!

This cake tested my patience! Not it terms of baking it but in terms of waiting to eat it :). I’ve been thinking of baking this one since the last weekend but when I finally went in the kitchen, I realized I had no lemon! On Tuesday, I was alone at home, watching Masterchef Australia and suddenly I wanted to bake. I so wanted to smell that aroma of fresh cake. So I opened my Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’ page 13 ‘Lemon Syrup loaf cake’. Now the recipe called for self-raising flour. Last time when I had made a cake using self-raising flour it didn’t raise at all! From then I had decided to stick to all-purpose flour and baking powder for any cake. I ‘google-d’ for the recipe and went to first link that came up Eat Little Bird! Even before I could read the recipe, I just loved the look and feel of the blog. To top it up her pictures and the style of presenting a recipe in pictures is amazing!

So I followed Thanh’s measurements and voila! The beautiful cake was ready in no time :). But where it tested my patience was that I wanted to eat it with Sikander and so I had to wait a whole night while the cake was sitting right there in my fridge and I was waiting for him to return the next day.

We don’t get lemon here, so I used lime and hence the different name :P. Limes have a stronger flavor than lemon so you might want to adjust quantity. Also I used buttermilk instead of milk so that the cake is extra moist.

Lime Syrup Loaf Cake

For the Cake

½ cup softened butter (the recipe calls for unsalted butter; but I always use Amul which is slightly salted.)

½ cup castor sugar

2 eggs

Zest of 2 limes

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp buttermilk

For the syrup

Juice of 1 lime

½ cup icing sugar

  • Butter and line the loaf pan well.

One very handy tip by Nigella here: Make sure that the lining comes an inch or so up from the sides of the pan for easier unmolding later.

  • Preheat oven to 180°C
  • Cream together butter and castor sugar together until fluffy
  • Add the lime zest and the eggs, beating them in well
  • Add the flour, baking powder and then mix in the buttermilk
  • Spoon the batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes, until the cake has risen in the middle and is lightly golden in colour.
  • While the cake is baking, prepare the syrup. Put the lime juice and icing sugar in a small saucepan and heat gently so that the sugar dissolves.
  • As soon as the cake is out of the oven, puncture the top of the loaf all over with a skewer. Pour the syrup evenly all over the cake.
  • Leave the cake to cool completely and let the syrup do it’s magic.

Another tip here: If you try to take the cake out of the pan before it has cooled down, the cake might crumble as it will be sodden with syrup.

Category : breakfast, Dessert, snack
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