It's vintage Vogue lemony pop !

I bought my first Vogue Entertaining when I was in my teens (read: late teen) and here I am now in my *gulp* early thirties! Golly! How time flies! So fast that I tend not to re-read the same book there are so many books I want to read before I die. Likewise there are so very many recipes to try I with much restrain stop myself from using the same ones.

Hummm this is a tried and tested recipe by the way. (I lost control, happens often)



One of my old favourite along with sponge cake with passionfruit cream, and carrot cake. I have a few lemon and poppy recipes but have stuck to only 2 and this is one of them, though I never seem to have bothered making the syrup.

Lemon loaf with poppy seeds
A recipe by Ro Francis’ aunt Mary, Vogue Entertaining Aug/Sep ’96 p.142
Cake :
125 gr butter
1 cup raw sugar (I only used about 2/3 cup)
2 eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup poppy seeds or to taste

Syrup:
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup caster sugar
1 cup water
julienned zest of 2 oranges, 2 lemons and 2 limes

To make the cake : butter and flour a 25 x 8cm loaf tin. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the zest, flour, milk and poppy seeds and mix well. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake on the centre shelf of the oven for 20 minutes or until cooked when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

To make the syrup : combine the juice, caster sugar and water in a small saucepan and stir, over medium heat, until the sugar dissolves. Add the julienned zests and cook until soft and translucent. Drain the zest and reserve the syrup. Spoon the syrup over the cake and pile the drained zest on top.

Note:
In case you think this is a lousy post, FYI I was ready to post yesterday. Then catastrophe happened I don't know what my naughty fingers pressed and pouf! whatever I had typed disappeared and seconds later, even naughtier blogspot auto-saved. Aaarggh!