Amalfi Lemon Cake

I thought I'd try another olive oil cake, since the chocolate one went down a treat.  This time it's a lemon version.  I love lemons for all sorts of dishes, and always have a couple of these sunshiny fruits in my fridge.  I also have a jar of preserved lemons, and a wee bottle of lemon juice (from the supermarket) in there too.  Lemons are definitely one of my desert island items, along with EV olive oil.  You could use the oil for keeping your skin beautiful on that desert island too :-)

We had a handyman in fixing a door lock when I made this cake.  He mentioned it once or twice, so I felt compelled to offer him a piece.  (That's his hand you see in the photo.)  He gave me a wonderful critique, which seemed like it came from a tv show or food magazine.  He was wonderfully erudite, and full of praise.  He liked the different textures - i.e. the almost crispy crust and rich, tender crumb, along with the pillowy softness of the whipped cream, and the slightly bitter caramelised lemon syrup.  I'm not kidding you!  He was a wonderfully helpful and well-versed critic.

smothered in billowing pillows of whipped cream

(This recipe comes from Delicious magazine)

Serves 8:

ingredients:

Cake batter:

1 medium lemon

1 cup/250 mL EV olive oil

4 large eggs

250g./9 oz caster sugar

300g./3 cups almond meal/ground almonds

75g./1/2 cup self-raising flour, sifted

600 mL/20 fl oz thickened/double cream

Lemon Syrup:

110g./1/2 cup caster sugar

juice of 2 lemons - I ended up with c. 150 mL/5.3 fl oz - which you divide into a 3/4 amount and a 1/4 amount

Method:

First boil up your lemon!  You can do this the night before as I did. Put it in a small but deep saucepan, cover with cold water, whack on a small plate to keep it down, bring to a rapid simmer, and let it boil gently away for 20 minutes till tender - i.e. a small knife will pierce it easily.  Keep checking to see if it needs more water.  Let the lemon cool, then cut into quarters and de-seed if necessary

Spoon it into a blender, add the oil and blitz away till you have a smooth emulsion

Turn your oven to 170C/340F to heat up

Prepare your 20cm/8 inch cake tin by greasing and flouring then adding a layer of baking paper to the base and sides

Break the eggs into a large bowl, then add the sugar and whisk together till well combined

And whisk in the lemon purée, almond meal and the sifted flour

Pour/spoon the batter into your cake tin, smooth it out and bake for 55-65 minutes till the top is golden-brown, and a skewer comes out clean from the centre

Cool in the tin for an hour, then turn out onto a wire rack to get completely cool

For the syrup:

Put the sugar and the 3/4 amount (i.e. juice of 1.5 lemons) of the lemon juice into a small saucepan over medium-low heat

Stir to dissolve the sugar, bring to a simmer and simmer for 6-8 minutes till the syrup is slightly thickened and turning a beautiful golden colour

Let it cool for a bit, then whisk in the rest of the lemon juice (i.e. juice of half a lemon)

Cool the syrup to room temp., whisk the cream to stiff peaks, smother the cooled cake in lovely swirls of cream, then tip the syrup over the cake

Will keep in an airtight container for a few days (as it is Winter here, I actually left the cake out of the fridge tho' I suggest putting it in the fridge if the weather is warm!

Notes:

It really annoys me when a food magazine gives such imprecise measurements for something like lemon juice.  I did a bit of research and various bodies said the average lemon holds 2 tbs or 4 tbs!  Or it could be 90 mils or 130 mils ... and so on, making quite a difference to the recipe ...  I had quite a lot of juice so that's probably why the syrup came out fairly tangy - not that I minded!

My syrup went very thin again when I added the fresh juice after simmering, so I reboiled for 2 minutes!

(BTW, for non-Blogger/Blogspot readers, a heads-up re email subscriptions.  Google in their wisdom have decided to cut off Feedburner as the delivery system for emails about our posts.  So I have registered with Follow.it, a different system.  You may get double emails for one or two posts, or it may go into your junk mail.  I'm hoping with all fingers crossed that it works out okay!)  

And P.S. - it's my birthday today!  Mr P. is taking me on a mini-break for the weekend, but there are Covid cases lurking so we are hoping like heck we manage to get away!  Birthday cake and presents are on the menu anyway.  Lucky me!

there's a lemon simmering away under that saucer!

lemon and EV olive oil emulsion

whisk your eggs and sugar together

add the lemon purée, almond meal and flour

pour the batter into the prepared tin

simmer for 6-8 minutes

simmering till golden and caramelised

slather on the cream

and pour on the syrup

spoon the tangy lemon syrup over the top

the handyman handling a piece

© Sherry M.