This is the most delicious cake ever and its so easy to make. Its from Fay Ripley’s first cookbook which I use all the time. Ive made this cake so many times I can barely read the recipe as its covered in lemon juice! It's everyone's favourite and I recently stacked 2 cakes on top of each other for a big birthday dessert.

Ingredients

For one cake - 8 good slices:
200g soft butter
200g golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
50g plain or white spelt flour
125 ground almonds
Zest of 2 lemons, finely grated
Juice of 1 lemon

For the icing:
Juice of 1 lemon
7-8 tablespoons icing sugar (sift your icing sugar)

A 20-22cm round cake tin

WHAT TO DO

Preheat the oven to 180 C (fan), 200 C, gas mark 6.

Line the bottom of a round cake tin and butter the sides.

Cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. I use an electric whisk to make this job easier and it takes about 5 minutes.

Slowly whisk in the eggs one at a time.

Then slowly add the flour, almonds and lemon zest and whisk everything together.

Put the mixture into your lined and buttered tin and while the recipe suggests baking for 35-40 minutes, I would test after 30 minutes. This is a very moist, almost dense cake, so don’t worry that it's not light and fluffy like a sponge. As long as your skewer comes out clean your cake is cooked.

Remove the cake from the oven and while its still hot and in the tin, stab with a skewer or cocktail so you have around 15 little holes all over the cake.

Drizzle the juice of 1 lemon into the holes and all over the cake. Leave the cake in the tin to cool.

To make the icing, first just mix a little lemon juice at a time into sifted icing sugar to make a light paste. Once the cake is cool, smooth the icing onto the top of the cake and adjust it to your taste - if its too runny add more icing sugar, too thick add more lemon juice.

Serve on its own or with some raspberries or blueberries on the side.

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