My grandmother’s lemon cake, written down at last

My grandmother never wrote anything down. Recipes lived in her hands: a cup of this, “enough” of that, an oven that she judged by holding her palm near the door. Her lemon cake appeared every Sunday at her house in Levenshulme, on a green plate with a chip on one side, and it was gone by the time the washing-up was done.

After she died, my sister Rosie and I realised neither of us knew how to make it. We had the plate. We didn’t have the cake.

Piecing it back together

It took us most of a year, two kitchens and a great many slightly wrong loaves. Rosie remembered she used self-raising flour, never plain. I remembered the sugar on top was granulated, not icing sugar, so it set into a crackly, glittering crust. Our mum remembered the milk, and that she always used two lemons, “never one, never three.”

The breakthrough came when Rosie found an old index card tucked into a Delia Smith book on Gran’s shelf. It said, in pencil: 8 oz everything, 4 eggs, 2 lemons, hot oven 45 min. That was the whole recipe. It was enough.

What follows is that card, translated into grams and full sentences, tested in my small Lisbon oven (which runs hot on the left, so I turn the tin halfway). Lisbon lemons from Senhor Abel’s shop downstairs are bigger and juicier than Manchester ones, so if yours are small, use a third.

Ingredients

For a 900g (2lb) loaf tin:

• 225g unsalted butter, very soft
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 225g self-raising flour
• Finely grated zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
• 4 tablespoons whole milk
• A pinch of salt

For the drizzle:

• Juice of the same 2 lemons
• 100g granulated sugar

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Grease the loaf tin and line it with a strip of baking paper that hangs over both long sides, so you can lift the cake out later.
2. Rub the lemon zest into the caster sugar with your fingertips until it smells wonderful and looks like damp sand. Gran never did this, but I think she would have approved.
3. Beat the butter and lemon sugar together for a good three or four minutes, until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. If the mixture starts to curdle, add a spoonful of the flour.
5. Fold in the rest of the flour and the salt, then the milk, until just combined. Don’t overwork it.
6. Scrape into the tin, level the top, and bake for 45–50 minutes, until golden and a skewer comes out clean.
7. While it bakes, stir the lemon juice and granulated sugar together. Don’t let the sugar dissolve completely — the grittiness is the whole point.
8. As soon as the cake comes out, prick it all over with a skewer and spoon the drizzle over it while it’s still hot in the tin. Leave it to cool completely before lifting it out.

How to eat it

In thick slices, on a Sunday, with a pot of strong tea and someone you like. It keeps for three or four days in a tin, getting stickier and better each day, though in my experience it rarely gets the chance.

I made it for the supper club last month and Dona Fernanda asked for the recipe, which from her is the highest honour available. I gave her the grams. I kept the index card.