‘Lavender Lemon Tea cake, lace tops & beautiful nature’

Lavender, such a beautiful elegant aroma and is for sure one of my favourite flowers of all time. I love the fragrance and always seek out home scents, sprays, soaps and flowers as it brings me such great memories when travelling. It gives me an instant reminder of those warm days in Italy or France that I cannot get enough of.  I found some dried lavender from the spice market in Dubai and for the sake of Friday and post Valentines day, I wanted to make a tea cake for the weekend. This recipe is just a traditional pound cake with a hint of infused lavender into the icing and filling. Lemon and lavender have a wonderful marriage and together they do wonders to afternoon tea time treats! Even though, Spring is not on its way yet, it is evident that days are getting longer and lighter and nature is quite beautiful right at this moment. We have lots of snow, the birds are out and I’ve already starting pulling out my lace blouses as we are slowing working our way to March.

Lemon Pound cake (serves 12)

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon lavender
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 cup buttermilk

Lavender Icing

• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 cup (perhaps more) confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tbsp dried lavender
• red colouring (optional)

Garnish

• Dried lavender
• Lemon zest
• Thyme twigs

Directions

Preheat oven 177 celsius degrees. Grease a loaf tin or use a silicon based one that needs no prepping.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, lemon zest, salt and lavender.

In another bowl, blitz together the butter and sugar with a hand-held mixer until pale and fluffy for about 3 minutes. While gently mixing, add in the eggs (one at a time), the vanilla and lemon juice.

While mixing, add in 1/2 of the flour and the buttermilk until combined. Then add the remaining flour and mix well.

Pour into a silicon cake tine and bake for 45 minutes until golden brown. Insert a toothpick in the middle and if it comes out clean, it is ready. Leave the cake to cool on a rack while you make the icing.

Lavender Icing

Heat the milk in a small saucepan with the dried lavender in it. Just before it comes to a boil, turn off the heat. Leave the lavender to soak in the milk for about 10 minutes until it turns a gentle purple colour. If the milk looks to mild in colour, you can add a drop of red colouring to help bring out the purple colour, but this is optional.

Then strain the lavender out of the milk and whisk the sugar into the milk until it turns into a thick icing. If the icing looks too loose, just add more sugar and that will do the trick. Once the cake has cooled, drizzle the icing on top and garnish with lavender, lemon zest and a few twigs of thyme.