Lavender Cake

Happy New Year readers!
This Christmas I was lucky enough to get quite a few cooking-themed presents. One of which was a jar of lavender sugar. I looked through my cookbooks (mostly Jamie Oliver) and browsed the web, but I didn't find any recipes that I was enamoured with so I decided to experiment. The advice I did take was not to totally replace regular sugar with lavender sugar as it is quite strong

Roxanne's Lavender and Lemon Cake

Ingredients
6oz butter
1oz lavender sugar
4½oz caster sugar
3 eggs
1½oz ground almonds
4½oz plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder

2 tbsp icing sugar
grated lemon zest


Step 1
Cream together the butter with the 2 types of sugar, until smooth and creamy.

Step 2
Beat 3 eggs and add gradually to the butter and sugar. Sift in the flour, ground almonds and baking powder and mix well.

Step 3
Spoon the mixture into a standard cake tin and bake in the oven at Gas Mark 5 for 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. (Or a 'Cake Tester' like the one I got for Christmas!)

Step 4

Lift the cake out of the tin and leave to cool. Meanwhile mix the icing sugar with the lemon zest and enough water to make a smooth icing. Spread the icing over the cake and sprinkle with a little of the lavender sugar.

The verdict

Bizarrely the cake didn't rise much (if anyone has any suggestions as to why this might have been please let me know). However, the lavender was just right, not too strong and complimented the lemon icing well. The overall texture reminded me of a lemon drizzle cake, moist and quite light.