For a family evening with my cousin and her husband and children,
I wanted to make a big cake, rather than my usual fairy cakes.
There is a recipe for a pecan and lemon celebration cake in The Great
British Bake Off book, but I wanted to make one without nuts, so I added more
flour in place of the ground pecans and also added some poppy seeds. I didn’t
use marzipan (nuts!) and ready-roll sugar paste, so I made up royal icing
with some lemon juice. I didn’t plan to ice the sides, but they looked a bit
bare, so I did the two short sides and spaced out vertical lines going up the
long sides.
The cake went down well with my cousin and her husband, who wanted
seconds. But their five-year-old son, who isn’t keen on sweet things, took one
bite of his mother’s cake and said, ‘Cake is yucky!’ Oh well, you can’t please
everyone.
