How Not to Make Lemon Cake

(a bad photograph of a less-than-perfect Lemon Cake)

An exciting event took place on Sunday: the first baking project occurred at my new chez moi!

I've been glued to Raymond Blanc's 'Kitchen Secrets' series on BBC2, and I was desperate to make his Lemon Cake from the second episode 'Cakes and Pastries'. What else was going to console me after discovering that Adam, M. Blanc's right-hand Commis who is beyond charming, is a newlywed?

(Surely my sigh was part of a collective exhale that spread across a certain BBC 'Lifestyle and Leisure'-watching demographic as he dedicated his Piece Montee to the happy couple?). There's even a Facebook group called 'Stop Raymond Blanc Nagging Poor Adam'. I, for one, think 'A-Dam' loves every minute of it, though. It may be tough love, but my guess is that Adam has put in many tougher, crueler hours/days/years to achieve such a level of mutual trust and closeness with his Chef de cuisine.

Anyway, back to this Lemon Cake.

I'm not truly 'home' in a place until the oven has been used. There's no microwave in the new digs, so it's back to old school warm-up-leftovers-in-a-casserole-dish kind of quick cooking on weeknights. Warming up leftovers in the oven doesn't count as 'using' the oven, though. I wanted something that would fill my humble rooms with something decadent and comforting. The perfect cake with a big cup of coffee on a Sunday afternoon seemed just the thing.

So, I diligently copied down the ingredients as I heard them on the programme.

For the cake:

5 eggs

300g caster sugar

140mL cream

juice and zest of 3 lemons

splash of dark rum

80g melted butter

240g flour

½ tsp baking powder

Yes, at minute 3:11 the voice-over woman clearly says 'zest AND JUICE' of three lemons. Whoops. Lesson number one: always double-check recipes gleaned from episodes of food TV. I got schooled. X-nay on the uice-jay. A relatively wet batter went in my pint-sized oven at 180 degrees C (as far as I knew...), and rose very slowly but steadily over the 50-minute time period prescribed. It did not, by any means, gain the kind of loft that Raymond Blanc's did, and that's when I began to worry. I cursed the oven, a brand new container of baking soda, grocery store eggs...had I not whisked enough air into the batter? I left the cake in for ten extra minutes, hoping that the mounded loaf would maintain it's pathetic poof. No such luck. After five minutes on the counter, that loaf sank into a log of dense, slightly rubbery stodge.

Unwilling to admit defeat, however, I continued on, glazing with warmed apricot jam and followed with une couche of lemon glaze. The result: a lemon loaf that is the stumpy, ugly step-sister to Raymond Blanc's Lemon Cake. In taste, however, I'm pleased to announce that it did not suffer, and I greedily sliced myself a hunk, took a seat at my new kitchen table as the sun blazed on the red brick across the street and was perfectly content with my stodgy cake, a cup of coffee, and to be truly home.

If you'd like to make Raymond Blanc's Lemon Cake as it should be made, the recipe is here.

Also, any tried and tested lemon cake recipes are most welcome!