The lemons on the tree are starting to ripen again and a few weeks ago I fancied a lemon drizzle cake. This sounds crazy but when I went to bed I asked the tree for some lemons and when I woke up the next day, I discovered it had kindly obliged. Two fresh lemons waiting in the patio!
I tried this Mary Berry recipe and although I prefer a drizzle made with icing sugar, the crunchy sugar on top gave me a great idea: replace the lemons with lime, add Bacardi, make it a mojito cake! (I think I was daydreaming about being at the beach now the autumn has definitely started.) My gin and tonic cupcakes have gone down well every time so that’s exactly what I did. It doesn’t have a strong rum flavour, but it has the fresh lime, crunchy brown sugar and fresh mint you find in a lovely mojito. For my first attempt, I used dark brown sugar but for the second version I used light brown sugar, which gave a lighter texture and made a better syrup for the topping. You can make the topping less ‘family friendly’ by replacing the water in the topping with more rum if you want to.
Ingredients
- 225g butter
- 225g soft brown sugar
- 270g plain flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 4 eggs
- Zest of 2 limes
- 100ml white rum
For the topping:
- Juice of 2 limes
- 2 dsp white rum
- 1 dsp water
- 100g soft light brown sugar
- Mint leaves
- Get the oven pre-heating to 160˚ and grease/line a tray of approx. 30cm x 24cm x 4cm or a round tin of about 20cm diameter.
- Put the lime zest, butter and sugar into a bowl and cream the butter and sugar. Putting the zest in at the beginning means it gets beaten about a lot and as a result it gives more flavour to the cake mix.
- Add the eggs and rum and mix well, then add the flour and baking powder. Don’t worry if you can still see bits of brown sugar in the mix, mine went into the oven with a lovely speckly look between the zest and the sugar and came out fine.
- Bake for around 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
- While the cake is in the oven, mix the water, sugar, lime juice, mint leaves and rum for the topping and leave them to stand. This allows the sugar to partially dissolve and also infuses the syrup with the flavours of the mint.
- When the cake is done, leave to stand for a few minutes, then poke all over with a skewer or a fork and pour the syrupy topping over it. The undissolved sugar will sit on top and go hard as the cake cools, making a crunchy rum topping.
- When it’s cool, enjoy with whatever beverage you prefer.
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