Lemon Drizzle Fairy Cakes

To counteract the unsummery weather we've had recently I wanted to inject some sun into the kitchen. Lemon is one of my favourite ingredients in both sweet and savory cooking and decided to play around with my fête fairy cakes recipe. This time I swapped the custard powder for cornflour as I didn't want the vanilla to dominate, but still wanted to have the light fluffyness that both custard powder and cornflour give to a cake.

For baking these I used individual silicone cake cups and they are slightly bigger than traditional fairy cake cases, but not as big as cupcakes. To be honest these cases and a spatula are the only piece of silicone bakeware I would recommend. In my experience the other type of silicone bakeware just don't work, are a pain to transfer to the oven, nearly always still stick, don't keep their heat well, which inturn doesn't bake the food as well. For every other type of baking I stick to traditional metal pans.

I wanted to use the mini jelly lemon/orange slices I had seen for sale somewhere recently, but could I find them when I wanted them? nope. I remember when we used to get these fruit slices in our stocking at Christmas I deemed them as the height of sophisticaion. My perception of sophistication has changed somewhat since then. Instead of decorating them with the elusive lemon slices decided to decorate them with some of the lemon zest.

One of the first things given to me from my Mum for my kitchen was a citrus zester. At first I thought "what on earth would I do with a zester", but I can honestly say it is one of the best gadgets I own. Rather than the fine zest a grater produces it produces long ribbons of zest which is ideal for decorating. Plus I have less chance of adding part of my finger to the dish than I would with a Microplane. For a loaf version of this cake try Tara's Lemon Drizzle.

Lemon Drizzle Fairy Cakes
Makes 12

140g unsalted butter, softened
140g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g self-raising flour
25g cornflour
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
100g icing sugar, sifted

1) Preheat oven to 190oc. Arrange cake cases in fairy cake tin. Beat together butter and vanilla sugar then one by one beat in the eggs.

2) Into the bowl sift flour and cornflour then fold into the batter until ingredients are well combined. Stir in lemon zest. Half fill each cake case with the batter.

3) Bake for 15 min until risen and golden. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

4) Beat together icing sugar, lemon juice and boiling water until you have a smooth icing. Using a teaspoon drizzle the icing over the cakes then leave to set.

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