Lemon Pound Cake with Lemon Butter Frosting

My Dad has a Meyer Lemon tree, lucky me. It's a prolific producer, and nearly always has ripe fruit on it. On the rare occasion that it's fruit is not ready for picking, the big old gnarly (in both senses of the word - knotty AND fully sick!) lemon tree in the garden of our beach house has ripe fruit, which means we have fresh lemons all year round. This was not a result of awesome plant management, more a fortunate coincidence. How ever it happened, a steady supply of fruit all year means, not only can we make Lemon Pound Cake any time we want it, it also means that when it comes to cough and cold season, we've got vitamin C covered.

Lemon Pound Cake

from Bill Granger's Every Day

For the Cake:

250g unsalted butter, softened
250g caster sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
250g self-raising flour, sifted

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Grease and line the base of a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper.

With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until smooth and creamy (about 5-6 minutes). Then add the lemon zest and vanilla and mix again.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix well after each one is added. Fold in the sifted flour, half first, mix well and then the second half and mix well until combined.

Spoon the batter into the tin and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cover loosely with foil if browning too quickly. Cool for 10 minutes in the tin then remove from the tin and let the cake cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.

For the Frosting:
45g unsalted butter, softened

110g icing sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

2 teaspoons lemon juice

With an electric mixer, beat the butter until very soft and white. Beat in the icing sugar, lemon zest and juice. spread over cake.