Lemon Drizzle Cake with Passionfruit Icing

 I’m currently researching lemon cakes. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it! I love any cakes with lemon or yoghurt or white chocolate or sour cream and that incorporate a lemon syrup.

I’ve made Jamie Oliver’s Greek Semolina cake and the always wonderful Le Pirate’s Lemon White Chocolate cake recently, both with my own Quirky tweaks.

And I have been making Claudia Roden’s Middle Eastern orange cake for many years. So I made a cake which incorporated the Claudia Roden idea of cooking the whole fruit, with a yoghurt and oil based cake. Lemon drizzle syrup and a passionfruit icing gave a tangy sweetness.

Cook’s note: I have found with this cake and previous versions that you need to drench the cake with lemon syrup to make sure it’s very moist. Maybe I need to adjust my flour quantities or my cooking times? I would welcome some thoughts!

Lemon Drizzle Cake with Passionfruit Icing

Ingredients

1 lemon
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup Greek yoghurt
2 cups self raising flour

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease a 24 cm spring form tin and line the base with baking paper.

Place the lemon in a saucepan with water and boil gently till soft- about 1 hour. When cooked, leave to cool, then blitz in a food processor until pureed.
Place the caster sugar in the food processor, blitz until well combined.  Add the eggs and oil, mix well. Stir in the yoghurt, followed by the flour.

Pour the mixture into the tin. It will be quite loose.  Bake for 30 – 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool slightly in the tin, and then turn out onto a rack.

Lemon Syrup

Combine 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup caster sugar in a small saucepan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is clear.

Pierce the cake all over with a skewer. While the cake is still warm, drizzle the lemon sugar syrup over the cake and allow it to soak in.

Passionfruit Icing

Place 1 cup icing sugar in a bowl with 2 passionfruit. Mix carefully to make a smooth, flowing icing. Ice the cake, allowing the icing to flow over the sides of the cake.