Ligurian lemon cake

I've been salivating at the thought of that cake since I read the recipe. It's still in the oven as we speak, but judging by the smell I think I might go and ask Pierre Hermé to marry me right away. His crazy wife is up to no good with her cocoa/mayonnaise cakes. Not to mention my long-standing aspirations to marrying a pastry chef to whom I could be a muse, to the extend that he would revolutionize the Charlotte and call it a Claire. But that's beside the point.

Now if you don't jump to your feet and dance, you're either paraplegic or you've had too much pudding.

As usual, kids, start with a clean copy of the recipe. Adapt proportions and convert units. I was too lazy, so instead I figured out that a "cup" (about 240ml) is about the same volume than a standard glass. Anyway, I don't own a set of scales.

 

I'll just give you my kid-friendly proportions, because I'm a teacher and that's what I do.

1 nearly full glass of flour
1/2 glass of sugar
1/3 glass of olive oil (decent one, please)
2 eggs
50g warm melted butter
1,5 tbsp milk
0.5 tbsp lemon juice
Zest of one lemon (hand-chopped)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
raspberries

The recipe is very well explained on the original website, but it doesn't hurt to explain things twice. Basic pedagogy.

After you have taken most of your lemon's zest (not the pith, damn it! Pas la petite peau blanche, malheureux!) with your veggie peeler and cut it in tiny bits with your favourite julienne knife, throw it (elegantly) in the sugar, and rub it in.

   
Poor old lemon never saw his native Liguria again.

Then add the eggs and whisk for three minutes. That's where having kiddies around is useful, they can whisk while you time with your stopwatch. By the way, with regards to the lemons, if you're planning to breastfeed in the next ten years, you might want to use organic unless you insist on having a fluorescent brat (un mioche fluorescent). God knows the amount of chemical rubbish they spray on the common stuff.

After this energetic whisking, you should get something nice and foamy.

Don't ever take his/her red pen away from a teacher, you would be causing unnecessary and cruel distress.

It's time to add, in the following order, the milk, the dry ingredients and the pinch of salt, the lemon juice, the melted butter and the olive oil. You just want to incorporate the ingredients slowly. No need for energetic whisking here.

Pour a third of the batter in a pan (mine was proofed with baking paper because I'm a lazy bastard, as we have established earlier on).

Pop the raspberries on the batter, following the pattern of your choice ("Versailles topiaries" is nice, so is "Stonehenge lunarium").

I went for a Bach's Kunst der Fuge motive, but it's quite obvious from the picture.

Pour the rest of the batter on top, bake 30' or until a knife's blade comes out clean, at 180°C.

Can you figure out what the interesting feature in this picture is, you clever dog?

Run to your guinea pigs'. It takes will power to resist eating it all on the way, trust me.

Comments

[inoule]

I guessed !
La tour Eiffel !!!

[Colloquialcook]

Yes! Thank you, somebody is *finally* reading the small print of this blog!

[Muriel]

The interesting feature in this picture is "la tour Eiffel" non ?

[Colloquialcook]

Hi Hopie
Oh yes... I'll put an update with the picture of the inside of that baby, Big T and I actually gobbled the whole thing down in a matter of minutes so taking a picture was "du sport"!

[Guinea Pig]

That was brilliant !