The Hummingbird Bakery’s Lemon & Thyme Drizzle Cake

 

A lazy Sunday with a few leftover ingredients in the fridge and Elldrew turn to their favourite cookery books to pass the time. On this week’s menu was the Hummingbird Bakery’s amazing Lemon and Thyme Drizzle (or Loaf) cake. It’s so delicious and so easy to make that we whipped one up for Ell’s office whilst we were finishing our morning coffee, and a second one for Drew’s office whilst we were digesting lunch (it’s not fair to favour either office, and if we hadn’t made two the rest of the lemon thyme and sour cream from our previous weeks tea party (blog on that to follow) would have been wasted)! 

FOR THE LOAF

• 190g soft, unsalted butter
• 190g flour
• zest of 2 lemons
• 3 tsp finely chopped lemon thyme leaves
• 190 caster sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 25ml sour cream

FOR THE SYRUP

• 40g caster sugar
• zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp finely chopped lemon thyme leaves
• 40ml water

RECIPE:

1. Preheat the oven to 175C and grease a loaf tin.
2. In a mixer (if you have one), or with a hand whisk, beat together the butter, sugar, lemon zest and thyme. Start slowly so that they come together and then turn up the speed until they are light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl after each egg to make sure it’s all mixed in.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Regular readers will know by now that I sift my ingredients twice (once on weighing and once again when adding to the wet ingredients) so sift it in, half at a time, to the butter mixture and mix it in lightly (I do this on a medium speed). Stir the sour cream in (also lightly), and then pour into the loaf tin.
4. Bake for 45-60 mins, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. In our oven this takes closer to the hour but after around 45 mins we lay some foil lightly over the top to stop the top of the cake burning, but allowing the centre to cook through.
5. Whilst the loaf is in the oven make the syrup, by putting all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring them to the boil, letting it reduce by half until you have a syrup. Pour the syrup gently over the loaf as soon as it comes out of the oven, whilst it is still cooling in the tin. Elldrew’s handy hint is to pour the syrup through a sieve onto the cake – we found that this stops any big lumps of thyme or lemon clumping on the cake.
6. Remove from the tin once it’s cooled (about another 20 minutes) and decorate it with one or two sprigs of the lemon thyme. Elldrew’s second hint is to get those decorative sprigs on whilst the cake is still warm and the drizzle sticky (it will help them stick better to the cake).

Allow to cool completely and then eat and enjoy.

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