Sweet and simple bakes - St Clements Drizzle Cake

Another delicious recipe this month for the Sweet and simple bakes group. This one was easy to whip up but the taste is utterly scrummy. I have a fondness for lemon drizzle cake and was keen to try the same thing but with a mixture of orange and lemon juice. I think on this occasion that the lemon slightly outshone the orange - I find that orange in baking can be a very subtle flavour, but the result was still great. I made the recipe pretty much to the letter, except that rather than use granulated sugar for a crunchy topping I used icing sugar, which I dissolved in the juice of the orange and lemon to make a syrup to pour over the cake. (As in this recipe I make for lemon syrup loaf cake, from Nigella.) I made sure that I had lots of holes in the cake for the syrup to penetrate and this resulted in a deliciously moist cake. You can see in the pictures that the edges of the cake are sodden with syrup, and this is one cake where the end pieces (normally with a tendency to dryness) become the favourite as all the excess syrup dribbles down the edge of the cake as it is bathing in syrup in the tin as it cools.

This disappeared rapidly at work - testimony to the popularity of lemony flavours at work. Sweet and lemony and utterly gorgeous - I defy you not to want to make this cake. You can find the recipe over at the sweet and simple bakes recipe blog and check out everyone else's cakes over at the round-up on the sweet and simple bakes blog. Thanks to Maria and Rosie for providing such a great bake.