Nigella Lawson's Perfect Every Time Lemon Drizzle Cake

I'm starting to realise just how much I love Nigella Lawson's cooking.....I've posted several of her recipes on here now and this cake recipe from How To Be A Domestic Goddess proves she really is the queen of desserts! This lemon drizzle cake was my first venture into proper baking this time last year and having made a dozen of these cakes in the last twelve months, I have to say, it really does work every time. It's an almost foolproof cake to make but the end result would never give that away. It's proved popular with everyone that I've offered a piece and been happily received as a slightly different (but yummy) birthday/Christmas gift by my friends and family. If you love lemons and icing, you will love this cake.

Ingredients

For the Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake

125g unsalted butter

175g caster sugar

2 large eggs

Zest of 1 lemon

175g self raising flour

Pinch of salt

4 tablespoons milk

23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin buttered and lined

For the Syrup

Juice of 1 and a half lemons

100g icing sugar

For the Glaze

Juice of half a lemon

150g icing sugar

Method

To Make The Cake:

Preheat your oven to 180°C/356°F/Gas Mark 4. Butter and line your loaf tin well.

Cream together the butter and sugar and add the eggs and lemon zest, beating them in well. Gently fold in the flour and salt, mixing thoroughly and then add the milk. Spoon the batter into your prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes or until a cake tester (I tend to use a wooden kebab stick as a cake tester) comes out clean.

For the Syrup:

Put the lemon juice and icing sugar into a small saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves. As soon as the cake is out of the oven, puncture all over with a skewer and pour over the syrup. Leave the cake to cool completely before removing the cake from the tin.

For the Glaze:

Combine the lemon juice and icing sugar until smooth and white, add a little more icing sugar if needed. Make sure your cake is completely cool before drizzling with the glaze.

Please note all photographs used in this blog entry are actual pictures of my cooking, not file photos.

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup

This dish is one of Nigella Lawson's dishes but as with most things that I make in the kitchen, whilst cooking it I changed a few minor details. The fundamental dish is the same but depending on your tastes, this dish is easily adaptable to suit many a different palate.  

Nigella says this herself, saying that although this is the ideal dish to make when you have a little leftover chicken, there are so many tweaks and ideas that you could introduce. Throw in some frozen prawns at the end and use all kinds of different vegetables (pak choi, bok choi, spindly asparagus, Chinese kale, peanut shoots and Chinese chives are some of her suggestions).

It's also a super easy dish to cook. Once you have all the prep work done, it really is a case of just tossing it all together and voilà, you have a beautiful bowl of food in your hands!

Fresh chillies, rice noodles soaking and chopped ginger, chilli and spring onion

Ingredients (serves 2-3 as main, 4-6 as starter)

1 litre chicken stock

150g thin rice noodles

200ml coconut milk

3.5cm piece of fresh root ginger (peeled and sliced thinly then cut into skinny strips)

2 tbsp thai fish sauce

1 fresh red chilli (de-seeded and cut into strips)

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp tamarind paste

1 tps soft brown sugar

2 tbsp lime juice

Cooked shredded chicken (I shredded two whole chicken breasts because I wanted chicken to be a big feature in the dish)

250g stir fry vegetables (I used thinly sliced red and yellow peppers, white cabbage and finely chopped spring onions)

2-3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander (to serve)

Method

My prep work began with the rice noodles - depending on what kind of noodles you have, there will be different ways in which to ready them for cooking. Mine had to be soaked in water for at least 15 minutes to allow to soften to I did this first.

I start the actual dish by steaming my vegetables. In Nigella's recipe the vegetables are added in for the last few minutes of cooking but I decided to steam mine to make sure they were cooked before being added to the soup. I put the sliced white cabbage and red and yellow peppers into a bamboo steamer and steamed them over hot water for approximately 8 minutes. Remove them from the heat and set them to the side.

Steaming my vegetables and chicken breast

Nigella's recipe also began with the precedent that the chicken is already cooked - for me this was not the case. To ensure that the chicken remained tender and moist, decided to also steam the chicken. I lined the bamboo steamer (after putting my vegetables elsewhere!) with grease proof paper and placed the two whole chicken breasts on top of the paper and set it back on the steam. Add half a lemon or lime to the steamer to add more flavour to the chicken. To fully cook them in this way took about 10 minutes but it depends on the size of the breasts so keep an eye on them to ensure they're not overcooked. Once ready, remove from the heat and allow to cool.

To make the soup, put the chicken stock in a good sized pan to heat up. Add the coconut milk, ginger, fish sauce, red chilli, spring onion, turmeric, tamarind paste, brown sugar and lime juice and bring to the boil.

The soup at different stages during the cooking process

Once the chicken has cooled, shred it and add to the soup, together with the pre-steamed vegetables and the now soft noodles which will cook in the soup in a few minutes.

Serve sprinkled with chopped fresh coriander.

Notes at the Point

This dish also works just as well with only a handful of noodles or even without them at all as a Thai chicken soup if you preferred to have something a little lighter, I've had this dish twice now, once as a soup and once as a full on noodle dish and it was yummy on both occasions.

As a soup and as a noodle dish

Please note all photographs used in this blog entry are actual pictures of my cooking, not file photos.