- 1 cup softened unsalted butter
- ¾ cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
- Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
- 3 large eggs
- 1 1/3 cups self-rising cake flour
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- 9×5-inch loaf pan, buttered and lined with parchment or wax paper
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Cream the butter and ¾ cup sugar, and add the lemon zest. Add the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of the flour for each. Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and, finally, the lemon juice. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with sugar (about 2 tablespoons should do it) as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in the pan before turning out.
- VARIATION
- I love a good old-fashioned seed cake; if you do too, add a couple of teaspoons of caraway to this batter. For a lemon poppyseed cake, add the juice of another half lemon and a tablespoon or two of poppyseeds. And I once came across an expensive but tempting curiosity: tiny dried strawberries. I upped the liquid to the juice of 2 lemons and folded in about a cup of the strawberries. It was a wholly successful experiment.