My Father's Madeira Cake

I always thought Madeira cake was just a fancy vanilla cake, but I was wrong, it's a fancy lemon cake! It wasn't until my dad said that he wanted this to be one of his birthday cakes did I go away and research it. Luckily, Nigella has a recipe in her book, Domestic Goddess, so I flicked to the page, read it and was amazed. It is a very simple recipe, but the taste is far from simple. Although it's a lemon cake, it's a cake that you can build on with flavour and I'm sure you've probably seen it in the shops with added extras such as seeds, spices and even icing. But my dad wanted this cake just the way my mum used to buy it from the shops: plain, yellow and yummy. So I ignored Nigella's advice to add some freeze-dried strawberries or some caraway seeds, I went down the traditional, beautiful route. It's a whole other level to normal lemon cake and you know that from the moment the smell of citrus permeates your house as it's baking. I must admit that I thought it looked dense when I cut into it, but it was light in texture. I also feel like the lemon flavour intensified the next day, which is a great bonus. Even though Nigella bakes this in a loaf tin, you don't have to, but I think with the cracks along the top (which you can't avoid) it makes it look very traditional, very old fashioned, and that to me says that it's going to be delicious. 

Just as you would expect with an old-fashioned cake, the first step was to cream the butter and sugar.

Once the butter and the cream were light and fluffy, I added in the zest of a lemon. 

With the mixer on low, I added in an egg, followed by a tablespoon of the mixed flours, and alternated between egg and flour until I had cracked in all the eggs. The rest of the flour was then gently folded into the mixture. 

Last, but by no means least, the juice from the lemon I had zested was poured in. 

After I had folded in the juice, I spooned the batter into my loaf tin. It was a 2lb 22x9x6 tin and made of silicone, so there was no need to line and grease it, but if yours isn't made of silicone, you will need to line and grease it. You can also buy special loaf tin greaseproof paper that just pops into your loaf tin like a muffin case. 

Once it was spooned into the tin, I smoothed the top (as best as I could) with the back of a tablespoon and sprinkled the top with caster sugar. Nigella says it should be around two tablespoons and I used around one tablespoon and a half.

This was then placed on the middle shelf of a 170-degree oven and left to bake for one hour. The reason I say you should put it on the middle shelf is the caster sugar on top. Put on a shelf that's too high, the sugar will burn and the cake will go a very, very dark brown before it's even finished baking. Even on the middle shelf, when I was happy with the colour of the cake, I loosely covered it with greaseproof paper to stop the top from getting any darker. 

After one hour I checked to see if it was ready by sticking a toothpick in the middle and it came out clean. It was a lovely golden brown with beautiful cracks running across the top. As I said before, the cracks are unavoidable.

I left the cake to cool completely in the tin before carefully turning it out. 

When it was time for my dad to cut the cake, I wondered, 'how am I going to present this for the birthday pics?' So I stuck the birthday candle in and used some sprinkles leftover from Christmas to decorate around the edge of the plate. Keeping up with the gold theme, it didn't look so bad!

Just by reading this post, you can see how easy it is to make this cake and it's these types of cakes that are the most satisfying when you eat them. Plus, if you find yourself craving something sweet in the middle of the day, you can quickly whip this up without any stress. I didn't think I would like to eat a cake like this, but it is quite moreish, so by the time everyone had eaten a slice, there was only enough to cut around three more slices. I made sure to leave one of those for the celebrant!

Makes: 8-10 slices

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Baking Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 240g Unsalted Butter, softened 
• 200g Caster Sugar, plus 2 tbsp for the top 
• Zest and Juice of 1 Lemon
• 3 Eggs, at room temperature 
• 210g Self-raising Flour
• 90g Plain Flour 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170-degrees. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until it's light and fluffy. Grate in the zest of the lemon, making sure you don't grate in the pith as this will make the cake taste bitter. 
2. Crack in an egg and add a tablespoon of the flours mixed together. Mix them in fully before adding the next egg and a tablespoon more of the flour, and finally the last egg with a tablespoon of flour. Gently fold in the rest of the flour.
3. Squeeze in the juice of the lemon you zested, making sure not to get any seeds into the batter. 
4. Spoon the batter into your prepared loaf or cake tin and smooth out the top with the back of a tablespoon. Sprinkle over the two tablespoons of caster sugar to create a fine, even layer on top. 
5. Place into the oven to bake for an hour and check that it's ready with either a cake-tester, toothpick or knife. If it comes out clean, then the cake is ready. Leave to cool completely in the tin before turning out. Slice up and serve.