To celebrate my renewed ability to consume fatty foods I have been treating myself to some naughty meals and on this theme I thought it would be great to bake a cake. After much deliberation (having been deprived for so long I wasn’t sure where to start) I decided upon a citrus and poppy seed cake that would be delicious sliced up for work as well, as a dessert, allowing maximum naughtiness throughout the day.
The finished cake
This is a great ‘chuck everything in together’ cake and so to a big bowl I added 6oz of butter, another 6 oz of sugar, 3 beaten eggs, 9oz of self-raising flour, 2oz poppy seeds, grated rind of 2 lemons and oranges and 4 rounded tablespoons of natural yoghurt. I beat this all together with an electric whisk (lazy me!) and poured it into a loaf tin. My tin is silicon so doesn’t need lining, but I guess a traditional one would just to be safe.
The cake went into the oven to cook long and slow, about an hour and three quarters on 150°c, until a skewer came out clean. I then left the cake in the tin for about 10 minutes to firm up before turning it out.
Once the cake was cool I iced it with a mixture of mascarpone, orange juice and lemon curd and voila, one citrus and poppy seed loaf cake.
A Slice of cake
The cake has a great texture and nutty undertone from the seeds and although the cake is quite heavy, the citrus, along with the icing, really lifts it. Due to the icing this cake needs to be eaten quickly or kept in the fridge as I unfortunately found out when 5 days later (I don’t quite know how there was some left after 5 days!) I discovered that the icing had gone mouldy – opps! However the cake itself stayed moist so I guess without the icing it would keep a while!
Rhi's Foodie World 