Jo's Fab Fruity Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe

Jo's original version 

 Part of my morning ritual is sitting down at the computer for ten minutes before rushing off to get ready for the work/school run and checking my new emails that have come in overnight. As well as numerous blog comments and genuine emails, I get to catch up on the daily digests of the various blogs I'm subscribed to. I know I could use a blogreader but I like the fact that I can keep any new blogposts that really catch my eye for easy reference. That's what happened last week when Jo posted a cake recipe that made me go hmmmmmm over on her Given To Distracting Others blog. She called hers Lemon & Blueberry Cake but here at The Madhouse, it's been rebaptised Jo's Fab Fruity Lemon Drizzle Cake and has been adopted as the new family favourite, ousting my banana bread recipe as top pick when we want to make a cake from scratch !

Jo says that she put her own personal stamp on a BBC Good Food recipe, and I admit that I've tweaked her recipe to fit what we had in the cupboard and fridge, so it's turning into a bit of a Chinese Whispers cake. Maybe we should turn this into a meme and see who can make the next tweak ?!!

I'll give you the recipe that we used but make sure you head over to Jo's blog to see the original version too.

The Madhouse Version of Jo's Fab Fruity Lemon Drizzle Cake 

175g softened butter, plus extra for greasing

1 pot of yogurt (I used up a prune flavoured yogurt that had been hanging about in the fridge because nobody likes that flavour !)

2 heaped tablespoons lemon curd

3 free range eggs

a good squirt of lemon juice 

1 tablespoon Steenbergs lemon essence (because I had it in the cupboard, but you could just add extra lemon juice and zest)

200g self-raising flour

175g golden caster sugar

200g of fresh fruit (we used cherries and peaches that were getting over ripe in the fruit bowl)

140g icing sugar

Cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the eggs, lemon curd and yogurt and gradually blend in the flour.

This is a great recipe for using up soft fruit that is on its time - we had cherries and peaches from the farmers' market going mouldy quicker than we could eat them so that's what we used, but I'll be using different fruit each time, depending on what is over-ripe in the fruit bowl.

You put in half of the cake mix, top with half of the fruit ...

Then add the other half of the cake mix and the rest of the fruit.

After an hour and a quarter in the oven  at 160°C, it should be ready. Check that a sharp knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

All my fruit sank to the bottom which is a bit of a shame, but it still tasted lovely.

Mix the icing sugar with enough lemon juice to make a lovely smooth lemon-flavoured icing and drizzle this all over the cake. You may notice that half of the cake disappeared before I even had time to go and grab the camera ! Sophie even took a piece in to school for her teacher, who said it was "absolutely gorgeous" ! 

It's lovely slightly warm from the oven but keeps really well for a few days too. It stays really moist, but it won't hang about for long, I can assure you !

OK, who wants to have a go next ?!

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Loseley Summer Meadow Butter review & Lemon/Orange Biscuits recipe

The Madhouse version of Eric Lanlard's Baking Mad Light Fruit Loaf !  

Capricorn Goats Cheese Blogger Challenge recipe #1 : Carrot & Capricorn Goats Cheese Muffins