Weekend Baking: Gin and Tonic Cake

This is a genius idea. Make a lemon drizzle, but instead of just drizzling it with lemon, add some gin in there too. A lemon ginzle, if you will. I've run out of tonic (this is a disgrace) so mine is just gin and lemon; I used the slightly unusual Spanish gin Mother Hand brought me back from one of her holidays in the cake, and Gordon's Elderflower Gin for the ginzle. It was that or Sipsmith and I couldn't bear to use that for baking.

It's quite potent. I'm not really sure whether I should be taking it to work, to be honest, but I'm sure the staff will thank me for it.

The ingredients thing is a bit odd. I did rummage around the internet looking for an alternative because who has ever heard of weighing your ingredients to equal the mass of the eggs? In the end, though, I decided it was pretty arrogant not to give it a whirl and it works beautifully. My four eggs handily weighed 250g so it was quite straightforward, especially with the butter.

4 eggs
Butter
Caster Sugar
Plain flour
Baking powder
2 lemons
200ml gin
Dash of tonic (if you've got any in)
150g caster sugar, for the ginzle

Weigh the eggs. Measure out that amount of butter and sugar; beat until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs. Fold in that weight of flour and baking powder. Grate in the rind of the lemons and fold this in too. Add the juice of one lemon and about half the gin. This will look pretty dodgy, especially to begin with, because it's a lot of liquid, but it's ok.

Turn into a prepared loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes at 180 degrees until a skewer comes out clean. Meanwhile combine the remaining gin with the juice of the other lemon and the sugar (you'll see the original uses granulated but I only had caster). When the cake comes out, leave to cool briefly, then skewer all over and pour over most of the ginzle. Leave to cool in the tin. If you don't use lazy silicone bakeware like me, you might want to turn it out, remove the paper and put it back in the tin to ensure it (a) doesn't stick and (b) doesn't dissolve your lining paper into the cake.

When completely cool, turn out onto a serving plate and spoon over the rest of the ginzle.

I think I might try this with limes next time.