Madeira Cake

It was my mum's birthday this week.  In a rare event, I was at her place for her birthday, so I made her a birthday cake.

Mum does not like rich cakes, and I heard her once mention that she liked Madeira Cake.  For this reason, I dug out my high school Day to Day Cookery book and made mum a Madeira Cake for her birthday.

This cake is quite simple to make and is rather tasty.  I added a lemon glaze to the top of my cake for a bit of extra sweetness and moisture.

If you would like to try making this cake for yourself, you will need:

120g butter

3/5 cup sugar

grated zest of one lemon

1/4 cup milk

1 1/2 cups self raising flour

Grease and line a loaf tin, and preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Cream the butter and the sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  In a separate bowl, sift the flour and stir through the lemon zest.

Add the flour and milk alternately to the cake batter (3 x 1/3 flour, 2 x 1/2 milk, starting and ending with the flour) and mix after each tranche to just combine.

Scrape the  batter into the prepared loaf tin, smoothe the top with a knife, and bake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until cooked through when tested.  

Remove the cake from the oven and leave in the tin on a wire rack for around 10 minutes before unmoulding from the tin onto the rack to cool completely.

Once the cake has cooled, you can decorate it as you please (I used a simple glaze made of icing sugar and lemon juice).