Cranberry lemon cake

One can tell there’s something wrong with this blog when the last lemon recipe was posted 2 months ago. :)

Nothing better to make things right than this beautiful, tender, fragrant and delicious cake, courtesy of the equally beautiful – and I bet fragrant, too – Ameixinha. ;)

Cranberry lemon cake

Cake:
2/3 cup (150g) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups (300g) caster (superfine) sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest
4 eggs
¼ teaspoon vanilla
3 cups (420g) all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 cup (240ml) milk
2 cups (220g) dried cranberries

Glaze:
½ cup (70g) icing sugar, sifted
½ cup (60ml) lemon juice

Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Coat 4 mini loaf pans with vegetable cooking spray.
In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the lemon juice, zest, eggs and vanilla until well combined.
In another bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add alternately with the milk to the egg mixture, beating just until combined after each addition. Fold in cranberries.
Divide batter among prepared pans and bake for 30-40 minutes if making mini-loaves. Remove to a wire rack, but leave in the pans.

Make the glaze: in a small bowl combine the sugar and the lemon juice. Pour over the hot loaves and allow to cool completely before carefully removing from pans. Wrap tightly to store.

Makes 4 – I halved the recipe above and used a 5 ½-cup capacity loaf pan