This lemon cake has such a lovely refreshing taste, with the addition of poppy seeds to this cake gives a great crunch to it. I have made a lemon curd to fill this cake which gives an added zing along with the lemon icing.  ‘Total lemon over load’ you may think, however it really works and we all love the texture the poppy seeds give.

You will need:

For The Cake:

• 170g Butter
• 170g Caster sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 170g Self raising flour – sifted
• Grated zest of 1 lemon
• 20g Poppy seeds

Lemon Curd:

• 45g Caster sugar
• 1 Egg
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 30g Butter

Lemon Icing:

• 115g Icing sugar
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1tsp Water (if needed)
• Candied peel (optional)

Method:

• Grease and line 2 x 18cm loose bottomed tins and pre heat the oven to 170 degrees.
• Cream the butter and sugar together.
• Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after the addition of each egg.
• Add the sifted flour, poppy seeds and grated lemon zest and fold though until well blended.
• Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and cook for about 30mins until golden.
• Leave to cool in the tin for 5mins, turn out on to a cooling rack to cool completely.

The lemon curd:

While your cake is cooking you can make your lemon curd. This is surprisingly easy to make.  If you are tight for time you can of course use a jar of lemon curd and you cake will taste just a good.

• In a small heat proof bowl mix together the sugar and egg, so the sugar dissolves into the egg.
• Place over a pan of simmering water and add the butter and lemon to the egg and sugar and allow the butter to gently melt.
• Stir constantly with a fork or mini whisk until this mixture has thickened, this will take between 10-20mins.
• Don’t be tempted to turn the heat up to speed the curd along as this will result in the eggs cooking too quickly and getting white flecks in the lemon curd. If this happens don’t worry, no one will notice once your cake is sandwiched together! (unless of course the flecks are very big!).
• Remove from the heat and leave to go completely cold, this will take a similar amount of time as your cake.

Lemon Icing:

• In a clean small bowl mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together.
• If the icing is a little to thick, add a teaspoon of water. Icing sugar will thin with the tiniest amount of water so only add a splash at a time.  If your icing thins too much, don’t worry, just add a spoonful icing sugar.
• You want quite a thick Icing that will just trickle down the sides of the assembled cake.

Assembly:

• Choose the best looking cake for the top, put the base cake on the serving plate
• Spread all the lemon curd on the base cake, allow this to set for 5mins.
• Gently put the top cake on top.
• Pour the icing on the top starting in the middle and encourage the icing to spread by itself over the sides of the cake.
• Decorate with candied peel if you wish and eat!