My exhaustion is overwhelming today. Not that I’ve actually done anything to warrant such a state.

But yesterday. Yesterday I went along to my cake class again. I like it very much. This week we were hand-painting cakes in a kind of watercolour fashion. I don’t have the waftiness down yet but it’s perfectly therapeutic the whole process. This is my first attempt.

So the recipe for this week comes from one of the prettiest cookbooks I own which was very kindly given to me by a friend. It’s Yotem Ottelenghi’s ‘Sweet‘. There are so many recipes I want to try with a heap of new flavours for me, all eastern like.

Anyway these are Yotem’s upside-down lemon muffins or as he calls them his lemon teacakes. I have to take my hat off to a fancy cook using good old fashioned water icing. There’s something nostalgic and very delicious about it, particularly a lemon juice version.

Lastly, as is always heavily advised, I adapted the recipe. Largely because I didn’t have enough ground almonds or any blueberries at all.

This quantity makes a solid 12 buns

Oven temperature 180 Celsius

Butter                        190g

Caster sugar             190g

Finely grated zest of 1 or 2 lemons

Eggs                            4

ground almonds      150g

Plain flour                 60g

Baking powder         1/4 teaspoon

Salt                              1/4 teaspoon

Juice of 1 juicy lemon (about 60ml)

Icing;

Icing sugar (150g-ish) and lemon juice

Preheat the oven and ready some muffin tins. Yotem, my bud, says to butter and flour the tins but I had silicone ones so I skipped that step and for once didn’t actually regret it which was nice for a change.

In a large mixing bowl beat the butter and sugar till homogeneous.

Throw in the zest and an egg and keep beating.

Add in a third of the almonds and beat some more.

Egg in and beat.

Another third of almonds and beat.

Egg and beat.

Almonds, beat.

Egg, beat and breathe.

Measure in the flour, baking powder and salt and beat a little more.

Finally in with the juice and beat for the last time and you’re done. It will look a bit gross and split at this stage.

Divide the batter evenlyish between the tins and into the oven with them.

They take somewhere between 30 – 35mins. They should be good and brown and firm on top.

As they cool you can make the icing. Think cement; start by weighing out the icing sugar and little by little add in the lemon juice till you get a thick, smooth but gloopy texture. Think loose toothpaste, you want the icing to be just able to drip down the side of the buns. I really mean little by little with the lemon juice. It can get very runny very quickly.

Now, you have buns and icing. Turn out the buns and place them upside down before dolloping on a flump of icing. Using the back of a spoon you can smush it closer to the edges to encourage it to run down the sides.

Yum.