When life gives you lemon, make Blueberry Lemon Tea Cake! Even better, blueberry tea cake with lemon curd baked inside. This tea cake is fresh and light and goes beautifully with the lemon icing on top and is packed with flavour particularly after a few days. Definitely the best way to put the fresh lemons to good use. :)
RECIPE
Yield: 1 Loaf cake
Equipment: 230 mm x 80 mm rectangle cake loaf tin
Preparation time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Baking time : 45 minutes to 1 hour
Recipe by Christean Ng
LEMON TEA CAKE
150g Butter, softened 220g Caster sugar 1 Lemon, rind finely grated, juiced 100 g Whole Eggs (2 medium eggs) 300 g Self Raising Flour 150 g Buttermilk or yoghurt 40 g Desiccated coconut 200g Fresh Blueberries 140 g Lemon curd
LEMON ICING
130 g Icing sugar
40 g Lemon Juice
How to make your own self raising flour
* If you do not have self raising flour in your pantry, you can simply make your own. Add 2% of baking powder for every 100 g plain flour to make your own self raising flour. In the case of the recipe above, you will need 6 g baking powder and 294 g plain flour to make up for 300 g dry flour in total.
METHOD
1. Prior to preparation, remove the eggs and buttermilk from the fridge to bring to room temperature. Sift all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside ready to use.
Pre heat the oven to 170˚C.
2. Stir the lemon zest into the sugar to infuse. Place the butter into a stand mixer bowl fitted with a paddle attachment then add in the lemon sugar and begin to mix over medium speed until the butter is light and airy. This process will take approximately 5 minutes or so.
Scrape the side and the bottom of the mixer bowl frequently to ensure that all butter are whipped evenly.
3. Just before adding in the liquid ingredients, whisk the eggs and buttermilk together. Do not whisk this two ingredients together too soon or the acidity in the buttermilk will start to cook the eggs. Alternatively you can add these ingredients separately into the cake batter.
4. Add in the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating after one another, starting with the wet ingredients and ending with the dry ingredients while mixing on medium speed.
Once all the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated, continue to mix, while scraping down the bowl frequently until all ingredients are well combined.
5. Line the cake loaf tin with parchment paper that has previously been lightly sprayed with some oil.
Sprinkle 1 to 2 tablespoon of flour in some of the blueberries, reserving a handful without the dusting on the side for later. Toss the blueberries with the flour to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake. Fold the coated blueberries into the cake batter.
6. Spoon one third of the cake batter into the base of the cake tin, then spread them out evenly. Pipe a few lines of the lemon cur on top and with the help of the skewer, run the skewer on top of the lemon curd into the cake batter in a zig zag motion.
Spread the second third of the batter on top and repeat the same process with the lemon curd.
Finally, top the cake tin with the rest of the batter, smooth out the top with a small off set spatula or with a spoon, then pipe more lemon curd on top in a zig zag motion without running the top with the skewer. Top with the rest of the blueberries.
Bake in the pre heated oven for approximately 50 minutes or until when tested with the skew it comes out clean.
7. While the cake is baking, prepare the lemon icing by placing the icing sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan and heat over low heat until fully melted.
8. When the cake is ready, remove from the oven then brush the hot icing on top of the cake. Leave the cake to cool slightly in the oven before removing it from the tin.
Top with more lemon glaze if desire.
