Husband has to work today, which means he’s been shut in his studio/computer room staring at the VPN screen, looking at servers.
I decided that he (we) needed a nice afternoon pick me up, and I wanted to bake something that wasn’t labour intensive. I have very fond memories of my Nan making Butterfly Cakes, and so I thought I’d try for that type of thing, but without the ‘wings’.
Cue the ‘weigh some eggs then use the same measurements for everything else’ method of cake. Except I used less sugar. I like lemon more than I do sugar.
2 eggs, weighing 146g
120g golden caster sugar
146g very soft butter (I use Kerrygold)
146g plain flour (I have used Dove’s Farm GF flour for this before, but subbed in 1 oz ground almonds)
then
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp lemon extract
grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tbs lemon juice
1/4 tsp baking powder
Cream the butter and sugar together until well mixed.
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each egg.
Add the ginger, lemon extract, lemon juice, zest and baking powder, mix well.
I tasted the mix at this stage, and added a bit more ginger.
Fold in the flour (I used a spatula so that I knew there was no flour left at the bottom of the plastic jug I was using.)
Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cake papers, then pop a dessert spoon full of mix into each case.
I managed to use all of the mixture up. Apart from the bit that I ate off the spoon.
Bake in a 170C fan oven for 20 minutes, then take out and leave to cool.
By all means ice these if you want, but they are just as good without. Neither of us are huge icing fans – unless it’s a vanilla cream cheese frosting, then you have to hold me back – but just for a bit of variation I piped, well, squished, some shop bought lemon curd into the middle of each one, and because I had white chocolate and lemon curd buttercream* in the fridge from a baking competition at work, I used a wee bit of that. A really wee bit, as Husband doesn’t like too much icing.
Voila!
*For the baking competition buttercream, I had used two tubs of Betty Crocker vanilla frosting, but whisked in 50g melted white chocolate, and 3 tbs of lemon curd. It made a an enormous difference to the taste. Turned it from something that was okay ish, to something that was GIVE ME A SPOON NOW nice.
COOKWITCH'S CREATIONS 