Ultimate Lemon Drizzle Traybake

I have a lot of favourite cakes but my Ultimate Lemon Drizzle Cake has to be up in the top 5. A sweet and sticky lemon sponge with a crunchy sugary topping, it is an absolute classic! This recipe is slightly revamped and has been tested 4 times and it’s come out perfect every single time.

My personal stance is that you have to use granulated sugar for the topping, there’s no way that you could get that wonderful crunch and stickiness from using caster sugar or heaven forbid icing sugar! Now because I use granulated sugar on the cake, I think it’s fitting to use granulated in the cake as well. That’s just personal, of course you can use caster if you prefer. Again this is down to preference but I like using the squeezy lemon juice from a bottle because I use around 100ml of lemon juice and I’m not really up for squeezing 4 lemons and then they just go in the bin.

For a traybake, this is enough cake batter to fill an 8-inch square tin. If you want a layer cake, this is enough batter for 2 8-inch sandwich tins.

Lemon Sponge

200g margarine

220g granulated sugar

240g self raising flour

¼ tsp baking powder

4 eggs

Zest of 1 lemon

50ml lemon juice

2 tbsp milk

Sticky Lemon Drizzle

100g granulated sugar

50 – 60ml lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a 20cm square tin with baking parchment, greasing the tin well making sure that the parchment will not fall into the batter, cutting off excess if necessary.

Place all the ingredients for the cake into a bowl and mix with an electric whisk for 1 minute until it is well combined. Take a spatula, scrape down the sides and give a final fold, making sure that there is no flour at the bottom of the bowl.

Transfer into the tin, level out and bake for 25 – 30 minutes until a cocktail stick inserted into the deepest part of the cake comes out clean. When cooked, use the cocktail stick or skewer to poke lots of holes in the cake.

During the baking process, prepare the lemon drizzle by mixing the sugar and lemon juice. It shouldn’t be too saturated but the sugar at the bottom should just drop off the spoon.

Then gently spoon the drizzle evenly over the cake, making sure that you don’t pour too much in one section or it will become too moist. You’ll see the sugar cover the cake in a crunchy layer, this is expected. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before lifting out and cooling on a wire rack.