This is one of my two default cakes (the other is the Cheltenham Apple Cake). If, like Nigel Slater, I couldn’t sleep without knowing there was a cake in the house, this is the one I would go downstairs to make.

125g butter, softened
125g caster sugar (I use a mixture of plain and golden sugar)
140g self-raising flour
2 large eggs
1tbsp full-fat milk
1 unwaxed lemon
1 tbsp granulated sugar

Oven at 180°C. Butter and line a small rectangular cake tin.

Whisk the eggs and add these into the bowl together with the flour, grated peel of half the lemon and the milk.

Beat well. Put into the prepared tin and cook for 25 minutes. Then turn down the heat to 165°C and cook for a further 10-15 minutes or until the cake is firm and spongy to the touch.

While the cake is cooking, in a small bowl, mix the rest of the finely grated lemon peel with the juice of half the lemon and the granulated sugar.

Spoon the sugar mixture over the came as soon as it is taken out of the oven. Leave for 10 minutes before taking the cake from the tin and putting it on a cake rack to cool.

Thyme leaves could be added to the cake mixture to give a different flavour.

Postscript February 2021

There has been amusing correspondence in The Times about Lemon Drizzle Cake. The cake features in The Dig, the recently released film about the excavation of Sutton Hoo in 1939. It appears that the recipe for the cake, originally called Luscious Lemon Cake, was by Evelyn Rose and first published in The Jewish Chronicle as late as 1967. The author’s daughter writes to say that the cake was probably inspired by American pound cakes and became her mother’s signature dish.

I was given a recipe for lemon drizzle cake in 1970 by a kind lady who lived in Cornwall. By then lemon curd had been added to the original recipe. Ground almonds were another addition and Greek yoghurt suggested a successful substitute for the lemon curd. However, the original recipe, as given above, is still the best.

In a poll by Country Living in 2018, Lemon Drizzle was declared the nation’s favourite cake.