Already armed with the baking essentials, all I needed was lemons and eggs to put together Mary Berry’s lemon drizzle traybake.
The beautiful thing about baking is that once you have bought the self-raising flour, for example, the likelihood is that you have nearly a whole bag worth to do more bakes.
This is simply the case with many baking ingredients, such as caster sugar and baking powder.
Simply requiring lemons and eggs, I thought I would give Mary Berry’s lemon drizzle cake a try, especially as it could be done within 35 minutes.
A fan of simplicity and ease, this straightforward recipe appealed to me greatly, although it’s worth investing in an electric mixer if you don’t have one already.
Mary Berry’s lemon drizzle cake recipe
Makes: around 30 squares
Prep: 10 minutes
Cooks in: 35 to 40 minutes
Ingredients:
225g butter, softened
225g caster sugar
275g self-raising flour
Two teaspoons baking powder
Four eggs
Four tablespoons milk
Finely grated rind of two lemons
Crunchy topping:
175g granulated sugar
Juice of two lemons
Equipment:
A traybake or roasting tin (30 x 23 x 4cm)
Method:
Cutting non-stick baking parchment to fit the base and sides of the roasting tin, I then greased the tin and lined it with the paper, making sure to push down the corners.
I then pre-heated the oven to 160°C and measured all the ingredients for the traybake into a large mixing bowl.
My technique for weighing ingredients is to first weigh the mixing bowl and then mathematically work out what the ingredients would weigh with that in mind. If there is an even easier way to measure baking ingredients, then I am open to hearing that!
Once all the ingredients are in the mixing bowl, I beat the mixture by hand (an electric mixer is recommended), then turned the mixture into the prepared tin.
Levelling the top of the poured mixture with the back of a spatula, I then baked the mixture in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes.
Before taking the traybake out, I first pressed my finger lightly in the middle of the traybake to make sure the cake sprung back, which it did.
Allowing the traybake to cool in the tin for a few minutes outside of the oven, I transferred the cake onto a wire rack placed over a tray.
To make the crunchy topping
I mixed the lemon juice and granulated sugar; ensure there is a runny consistency before drizzling over the warm cake (I didn’t do this as I forgot to add the second lemon).
A lemon squeezer from Amazon or Asda, for example, is recommended, as I spent some time getting the lemon seeds out of the mixture, which ultimately led to a silly mistake – I forgot the second lemon until after I drizzled over the thick sauce.
Regardless, mine still tasted delicious, so ensuring the sauce is a runny consistency with two lemons will be even better!
