Lemon cake is my absolute favourite.

When I was about 12, we had a recipe book with an orange & lemon cake in it and I made it over and over again. Whenever I was at a loose end, I’d ask my mum whether I could do some baking, and often it was this cake I elected to make. I have recently been feeling very nostalgic for that cake but sadly can’t find the recipe.

When I lived in London in my late 20s, I discovered Konditor & Cook. One of the best things about the brand agency where I worked was that whenever it was someone’s birthday, we’d have cake and wine, and that’s how I came across their amazing lemon chiffon cake.

My appreciation for this cake led to me waking up an hour early to pick one up on a Saturday morning and transport it on the train back to Birmingham for my sister’s birthday, all so I could have a slice. I would make a special trips out on a Sunday evening to buy a slice and one day I had a work meeting next door to the bakery so I bought some lemon cake for breakfast and shamelessly tucked into it at 9am.

In another chapter of my love affair with lemon cake, my sister once made a ‘Lemon Crunch Cake’ from Fiona Cairn’s recipe book, when my soon-to-be in-laws were visiting my parents. It was out-of-this-world good, so much so that we didn’t even manage to leave any for my sister to try! The worst thing is that we have never been able to replicate     the alchemy, despite many, many attempts. Here’s a link if you fancy giving it a go: http://blog.hellomagazine.com/fionacairns/2015/01/a-very-lemony-crunch-cake/

Likewise, I often make an approximation to the Konditor & Cook lemon chiffon cake, from what claims to be their recipe published in The Times, but it’s never quite right. Perhaps I need to make a real chiffon cake sponge, as opposed to a lemon version of a Victoria sandwich sponge …  Maybe there’s something in the technique I have not quite mastered. Watch this space, as I am determined to crack this one day soon.

And then, out of the blue, I stumbled upon a lemon drizzle cake recipe that I really didn’t expect much from.

I offered to make Easter day pudding for lunch at my in-laws and had the proverbial bee-in-my-bonnet about wanting the ultimate spring flavour of lemon (particularly as lamb had been vetoed), knowing that everyone else around the table would prefer chocolate. I decided that making mini cakes could solve this issue, allowing everyone to have what they wanted, perhaps even one of each (!), but also thereby doubling my workload. When it became clear that I had taken on too much, and time was running out, I selflessly prioritised the chocolate cakes, even making a chocolate pouring sauce to go alongside. But I am nothing if not stubborn and so I frantically whipped up a quick batch of a simple-looking lemon drizzle recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website anyway. I did notice in passing that it was very highly rated, and had a lot of reviewers. I poured the drizzle over hastily but they weren’t cool enough to add the Konditor and Cook-inspired cream cheese icing.

The pressure was on so I reheated the chocolate sauce hurriedly, plonked the mini cakes next to each other on a big plate and served them up.

After all that, the chocolate cakes were dry and disappointing and to top it off (in more ways than one), I had managed to burn the chocolate sauce by cranking the hob up too high.

Thankfully, the lemon drizzle cakes were there to save the day. They were a-maz-ing. So simple. So good. So tangy. So sweet. Making them individual-sized meant more surface area for the delicious lemon juice and crunchy sugar drizzle.

Miniature dreamy drizzled lemon cake

Very slightly adapted from Lemon drizzle cakes recipe on bbcgoodfood.com

Ingredients

Cake:

• 250g soft unsalted butter
• 250g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 250g self-raising flour (for Paris-dwellers you can get this at M&S)
• zest of 2 lemons
• juice of 1 lemon

Drizzle:

• 150g caster sugar
• juice of 2 lemons
• zest of 1 lemon

Method

Preheat your oven to 160°C and prepare the moulds for your cakes (I used a silicone one with 6 mini cake ring moulds) or cupcake cases in a tin.

The method for making these cakes is very simple. Pop all the ingredients for the cake in a bowl and use an electric whisk to mix until they are just combined.

Then spoon mixture into your cake moulds or cupcake cases, filling them 2/3 full and bake in the middle of the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Let them cool for 10 minutes and whisk together the drizzle ingredients. When the 10 minutes are up, use a cocktail stick to prick little holes in the tops of the cakes and drizzle over the drizzle.