Nigella’s Mother-in-Law’s Madeira Cake

This week’s I Heart Cooking Club’s theme is Baker’s Delight.  I was very excited when I saw this week’s theme given my crack-like addiction to sugar.  I knew I could easily find a delicious Nigella creation to make.  This is definitely one of those “sleeper” recipes……deceptively easy to make but absolutely delicious.  After preparing this, I know for a fact I need to invest in a kitchen scale.  I sat here with a calculator and pencil doing the conversions and started praying for the best after closing the oven door.  It’s nowhere near as beautiful as Nigella’s, and that may be partially due to my “calculations.”  Therefore, I’m going to post the recipe as it was written by Nigella.  It was still good, though.  I served it with sliced strawberries, cause that’s my hubby’s fave.

Nigella’s Mother-in-Law’s Madeira Cake

Ingredients

• 240g softened unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling (I didn’t have any superfine sugar, so I buzzed regular sugar in my food processor for a bit.)
• grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 3 large eggs
• 210g self-raising flour
• 90g plain flour
• 23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin, buttered and lined

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3.
2. Cream the butter and sugar, and add the lemon zest. Add the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of the flour for each. Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and, finally, the lemon juice. Sprinkle with caster sugar (about 2 tablespoons should do it) as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour or until a cake-tester comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in the tin before turning out.