Truly Scrumptious

I do love a lemon cake. Finding a good dairy free one can be tricky. Sometimes just substituting vegan butter for the regular butter gives it a greasy flavour and you often have to experiment and use a bit less vegan butter. The version here uses extra virgin olive oil with coconut yoghurt, and the flavour is lovely, not greasy at all. This is one of those recipes that I made on the off-chance and I wish I had taken more photos to show you. It’s ridiculously easy, you basically have your dry ingredients in a bowl, whisk your wet ingredients in another bowl, and stir the two together. A loaf tin is a really convenient size, but you could make a round version if you like.
Wash your lemons before zesting – sometimes they have a waxy coating to make them look nice and shiny in the supermarket. Rinse them in warm water and pat dry (or buy them from a farmers’ market where they don’t indulge in this trickery!)

So to start you need to line a regular sized loaf tin (21cm x 11cm) with baking parchment, and set your oven to 165 degrees fan (or 175 degrees non fan).

Now mix the dry ingredients in a bowl – I use Australian cup measures, the weights are a rough guide:
1 cup (250ml or 125g) of plain flour
Half a cup (125ml or 65g) of almond flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt

Now get the wet ingredients ready:
Half a cup (125ml or 106g) of caster sugar – place in a bowl
2 tablespoons of lemon zest – add to the sugar – this adds a lot of the flavour and is my ideal amount of lemoniness. If you like it more subtle you can use less.
Three quarters of a cup (185ml) of plain coconut yoghurt (if you can eat dairy you can use a lovely thick Greek yoghurt if you prefer)
Half a cup (125ml) of extra virgin olive oil
A third of a cup (80ml) of lemon juice
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Okay so you should have the lemon zest and sugar stirred together in your bowl. Add all of the other wet ingredients. You can whisk with a hand whisk, but if you have an electric whisk, use that instead. The mixture will be quite runny but whisk it for a few minutes until you see some bubbles on the top.

Now stir in the dry ingredients. This will thicken it up so that it’s more like a muffin mix. Don’t worry if it’s a bit lumpy – it’s better not to overwork it.
Pour the mixture into the lined loaf tin.
Tap the tin on the work top to make sure the mixture gets down to the corners.
Then pop it in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes. It might take longer depending on your oven but have a listen. If the tin sounds very crackly, then the mixture is probably still cooking and needs longer, but try to see if a skewer comes out clean. If it does, then you can take the cake our of the oven. If it’s still making crackly noises, cool it in the tin as the residual heat will cook it a bit more, otherwise lift it out of the tin and onto a cooling rack.
If it needs longer in the oven, check it at 5 minute intervals and try the skewer again.

Make sure that cake is completely cool before icing. You can also use a lemon syrup to make it a drizzle cake if you don’t like icing. If you want it to be super lemony you can slice the cake in half horizontally and add a layer of lemon curd.

For the standard icing you need:
1 cup of icing sugar
2-3 teaspoons of lemon juice (add this very gradually – don’t let it get too runny)
Optional lemon zest (as much as you like but the zest of a small lemon should be about right)

Slowly add the lemon juice to the icing sugar and mix until you have a spreadable consistency that isn’t going to just slide off the cake. It needs to be fairly stiff, but not so stiff that you can’t spread it. Don’t worry if you get a few drips down the side of the cake – it all adds to the personality of your bake. If you are using lemon zest you can sprinkle some on top (you can also mix it into the icing – it doesn’t matter).

Try to leave it for an hour for the icing to settle, then put the kettle on for a cuppa and a slice. Leaving it will require a level of discipline as this super soft and tasty cake will be a firm favourite that you can’t wait to taste.