Citrus drizzle cake

Welcome to Small Wins, a newsletter that shares a small win with you every other week — one that has the power to improve your cooking, your home, your life. If you’ve found your way to this newsletter but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:

This recipe works with any citrus although my current obsession is grapefruit, which I particularly like in this because it has this complex sour-sweet-bitter-floral thing going on that is distinctive when eaten raw but tends to get lost when cooked — the fact that the glaze in this cake isn’t heated makes all the difference! I also love that it means less faff, less washing up and more texture.

Makes 12-16 squares

Ingredients

For the cake:

170g caster sugar
Zest of 1-2 grapefruit (Or 2 lemons! Or 4-5 limes! Or a mix!)
225g unsalted butter
4 medium eggs
50g ground almonds
1 tsp flaky sea salt
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
70ml whole milk (or non-dairy milk)

For the glaze:

175g granulated sugar
175ml fresh citrus juice (can be lemon, grapefruit, lime, or a mix — orange by itself wouldn’t give you enough sharpness but it’s good combined with lime!)

Equipment:

Traybake tin (30cm x 25cm x 4cm, or similar)
Electric hand-whisk — I love mine because it has a retractable cord!

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Line your tin with baking paper (you can just roughly push a sheet into the tin if you like — doesn’t have to be precise).
In a large bowl, rub together the caster sugar and grapefruit zest. Add the butter, eggs and ground almonds, sprinkle the salt over evenly, then sift over the flour with the baking powder (to help disperse it evenly).
Mix together using an electric hand whisk just until fully combined and smooth (overworking the mixture will result in a tough cake, so avoid this). Briefly whisk in the milk, then pour the batter into the prepared tin and even out the top.
Bake until golden and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean, around 30-40 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin before cutting into squares with a serrated knife.