Remember when you were young and you keep saying that ‘I’ll never be like my mom!’? And then you grow up and discover that you’re more like your mom than you think… and actually glad about it. I think I’ve almost reached that point and this just shows what a good mother my mom is that I do want to be like her. I don’t think I’ll ever manage as she will always be supermom to me.

But I digress…

What I wanted to say is, mom is not really a ‘present’ person. Sure she does give gift but I think her actual joy in giving is food based. She loves to bake and that’s what she gave people most of the time. She built up a reputation on her fruit cake that people started to order her cakes… but unlike other people profiting 100% on their baking as they include labour, mom usually charge much less… mostly to cover the cost of baking her cake.

I’ve started to do that; baking cakes as gifts for people. They seem to enjoy my baking… who knows… maybe one day I’ll start getting orders… and maybe just charge a little bit more than my mom… or actually be like my mom and just charge the cost!

This Christmas, I (and Little Bee on occasions) baked lemon cakes for Little Bee’s nursery, Al’s cafe and also Lina and Little Maya. I felt it’s much better than wrecking my brains on what to buy and it adds some personal touch… I hope they enjoyed the cake.

It is a very easy recipe by Tana Ramsay that on the BBC Good Food website. I love the citrus smell that filled the kitchen as I baked it.

Lemon Cake

Ingredients:

225g unsalted butter, softened (30 seconds medium heat in the microwave)
225g unrefined caster sugar
4 eggs
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
225g self-raising flour
juice of 1 lemon
60g unrefined icing sugar

1. Heat oven at 180C or gas mark 4. Grease a loaf tin with butter and line the bottom of the tin with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and caster sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and slowly mixing through. Sift in the flour and add the lemon zest. Mix until well combined. Spoon in the mixture into the loaf tin and level the top.
3. Bake for about 1 hour or until the skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
4. While cake is cooling in the tin, mix the lemon juice and icing sugar for the drizzle. Pour the drizzle and leave it to completely cool in the tin. Once it’s cooled completely, remove from tin and it’s ready to be served. Any left overs will keep in an air tight container for 3-4 days. Apparently you could freeze it for up to a month… Somehow I don’t think it will last that long

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