My friends all know I love to bake...they also know I love gin! So when my friend Kim saw this recipe online she tagged me in it straight away! This recipe is from The Craft Gin Club website and its very straightforward to make, like a classic lemon drizzle but with a sneaky bit of gin added in. The cake came out lovely and lemony and smelt divine! However, when it came to the drizzle it seemed so much liquid that I triple checked the recipe to make sure I was reading it correctly. I decided to omit the tonic, for fear of drowning my cake, but even without that my cake was still sat in a small puddle of liquid when I removed it from the tin after cooling and it completely overwhelmed the cake, leaving it soggy in the middle. Upon tasting I thought the cake was lovely and moist and had a lovely fresh lemony taste, with the gin adding a touch of sweetness. The general feed back was a bit like marmite - people either loved the addition of gin or they hated it but I think gin can be divisive like that anyway! I would happily make this cake again, but with HALF the liquid in the drizzle and then I think it would be spot on!
Ingredients
3 Eggs
240g Butter
240g Caster Sugar
240g Self Raising Flour
2 Lemons
200ml Gin
25ml Tonic Water (I left this out)
130g Granulated Sugar
How To Make
1. Preheat the oven to 180'c and grease and line a loaf tin. Cream together the butter and caster sugar until light, fluffy and pale.
2. Beat in the eggs and then fold in the flour and the grated zest of both lemons. Stir through 100ml of the gin and the juice of 1 lemon. Pour into your loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes until risen, golden and a skewer test comes out clean.
3. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool while you make the drizzle. Mix the remaining gin (here I would only use about 30ml next time), tonic water, granulated sugar and the juice of the second lemon in a bowl. Prick the cake all over with a skewer and then pour over the drizzle.
4. Leave the cake to cool in the tin. Once cool and the drizzle has soaked in and the sugar crystallised on top, remove from the tin and serve!
Last year my sister had her 30th Birthday party and it was a "Cocktail & Canapes" theme. My Mum organised all the savoury canapes and asked me to do the sweet ones. They needed to be easy to pick up and not require a plate and so, sticking with the cocktail theme, I decided to do cocktail jelly shots and cocktail cupcakes - complete with "Shot Tops" which are little pipettes that you fill with a liquid of your choosing and stick them in the top of the cupcake. When eating you can infuse the cupcake with the liquid - or squirt it in your mouth as some did at the party!!! Anyway, after lots of research I settled on 3 flavours and Gin & Tonic one was one of them. I adapted my lemon sponge recipe to incorporate the Gin and once baked and iced (I tinted mine yellow) I decorated them with a slice of lemon and a shot top filled with gin and tonic. Makes 12.
Ingredients
6oz Stork
6oz Caster Sugar
6oz Self Raising Flour
3 Eggs
Zest of 1 Lemon
1 tbsp Gin
For the icing...
200g Stork
400g Icing Sugar
2 tbsp Lemon Juice
1 tbsp Gin
How to Make
1.
Preheat the oven to 160'c and place 12 cupcake cases into a muffin tray.
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then gradually add the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of flour to prevent curdling.
4. Fold in the rest of the flour and the lemon zest. Lastly stir through the gin. Spoon the mixture evenly between the 12 cases. Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden and a skewer test comes out clean.
5. Leave them to cool on a wire rack. Once cooled make the icing. Beat the butter until soft and fluffy and then mix in the icing sugar, lemon juice and gin. Pipe onto the cupcakes and decorate however you wish.
