As we march headlong into the weekend and the sun is starting to show its face, I wanted to bring a little sunshine into your kitchen with my Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe.
Pick up some unwaxed, organic lemons today or tomorrow and fill your home with this oh so sunny delight (even typing that made me giggle with 90s nostalgia) this weekend. I’ve been thinking of Lemon Drizzle Cake this week as I prepared to let you in on a very exciting commission that I have received.
For this, we need to go back in time five years to 2012.
I was made redundant in the Autumn of 2011 and decided, with the support of my incredible Husband, to throw myself into running Restoration Cake and see if it could pay the bills. The story does not then melt into rainbows and unicorns and tah-dah, now I’m a millionaire; instead think the training montage in Rocky IV and that’s about right. I’m most often Rocky, sometimes Ivan Drago, and frequently feel like the poor sod sparring with a genetically modified Russian.
2012 felt like a year of great opportunity and I met and worked with some incredible people that year. Perhaps the most special of these people was Dame Vera Lynn.
Through a chance meeting with The Swingtime Sweethearts at RAF Hendon, I was asked to make a cake for Dame Vera’s 95th Birthday. I made this blue iced cake, laid with delicate sugar lace and topped with fresh white roses. Like most artists and creative types, I look back on this 5-yr-old work and think how much better I would make this cake now in 2017!
Thankfully, I am blessed to have the opportunity as I will be baking a very special cake for Dame Vera Lynn’s 100th Birthday celebrations next weekend.
There will be a huge party and tribute concert happening at The London Palladium on Saturday 18th March, with my new cake offering in the VIP area for all to enjoy! To read all about the event and to pick up a ticket for yourself, just click here or on the picture above.
It is beyond an honour to be baking for Dame Vera Lynn again. Her voice is the sound of hope, resistance, resilience in the face of despair. I was lucky enough to speak to the lady herself back in 2012…
… excuse the shaky phone pic but both my Mother (my date for the Birthday lunch) and I were a little starstruck. In fact, it wasn’t until a couple of days later that the significance of meeting this wonderful woman hit me. I burst into tears whilst cooking a spaghetti bolognese because I wanted so badly to call my Grandad and tell him everything but he was no longer with us. I can say, without fear of any inaccuracy, that he would have been proud as anything and would have dined out on this story forever!
I am busying myself working on my new design befitting this occasion and cannot wait to share the pictures with you. Just for comparison, here is a shot of the 95th Birthday cake.
I am certain that there will need to be a tier of Lemon Drizzle Cake in there somewhere! It went down so well last time.
If you are looking for a treat to share with your own loved ones this weekend, I can heartily recommend this slice of sunshine. Just click on the picture for the recipe in full.
Stay gorgeous!
Cxx
