Lemony Hot Milk Cake

Over the weekend I made some Cheddar cheese, which needed whole milk.  I had some of that milk left over so I needed a recipe to use it up.  I did a little searching and found a very nice recipe on giallozafferano.com for a hot milk cake flavoured with some lemon zest.  It only needed 200ml of whole milk was slightly less than I had left so I thought I would make that cake.

The recipe is very simple and doesn’t have too many ingredients.  The lemon flavour can be adjusted to taste by varying how much lemon zest is included.  For mine I wanted a subtle lemon flavour to teh cake so I used just one good sized lemon.

The process is different to many cakes since a batter is made with eggs, sugar and flour and then milk is heated with butter until boiling and then added into the batter.  It is as simple as that.  Although I whisked the eggs and sugar with my hand mixer this recipe can easily be done with a manual whisk though that would take longer.

My cake turned out very well.  It was soft and moist with the hint of lemon.  However I baked it using the convection fan at 160C for 35 minutes and it wasn’t cooked in the centre when I tested with a skewer, so I baked it for a further 10 minutes, testing after 5 and then 10 minutes.  By that time a skewer in the centre came out clean, so I was fairly sure it was baked through.

Ingredients:

• 200g(1 1/2 cups) plain flour
• 180g(3/4 cup + 2 tbps) caster sugar(or granulated)
• 4 medium eggs(large in USA)
• 60g(4 tbps + 1 tsp) unsalted butter
• 6g(1 1/2 tsp) baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 200ml(1/2 cup+1/3 cup) whole milk
• Zest from 1 lemon.

Method:

1. Grease and flour an 8 inch/20cm cake tin. ( I also put parchment paper on the bottom).
2. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F
3. Beat the eggs in a large bowl after adding the salt.
4. Slowly add the sugar beating all the while until the eggs are light and fluffy(about 2 mins on high speed with a hand mixer).
5. Mix the baking powder into the flour and sift the flour onto the egg mixture, in two additions, gently folding in until fully combined.
6. Take about 3 tablespoons of the batter and put into another bowl.
7. Place the milk and butter into a saucepan and heat until the butter is melted and the mixture just comes to the boil.
8. Remove from the heat and pour into the bowl that has the 3 tablespoons of batter, and the lemon zest and then whisk until it is all fully combined.
9. Pour that milk mixture into the batter and gently fold until fully combined.
10. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 35 minutes.  Then test with a skewer in the centre.  If it comes out clean remove the cake from the oven. If the skewer is not clean continue baking, testing every 5 minutes until the skewer is clean when testing.
11. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.