Wildes curd lemon cake

This cake was created to use the delicious curd cheese I brought back with me from Wildes Cheese after a delightful day spent learning about cheese-making. Philip and Keith run this small urban artisan dairy in Tottenham, North London. On reading about their passion for their craft I knew that this is where I wanted to learn. They say they were drawn to cheesemaking “because it’s pure magic, a form of alchemy”. Now, where have I heard that before?!!
​
The curd cheese’s soft and velvety texture is perfect for making a rich bundt cake, especially paired with the sweet sharpness of lemon. The resulting cake is light and moist, in spite of its characteristically dense crumb. And it’s wickedly moreish!

​Ingredients
​
For the cake
375g Self Raising flour
75g ground almonds
375g golden caster sugar
300g unsalted butter, softened
225g curd cheese
75g creme fraiche
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice 1 lemon (approx 50ml)
Seeds from 1 vanilla pod
5 medium eggs (or 4 large - approx 250g), beaten
1½ tsp fine sea salt
2 tbsp homemade or good quality lemon curd

For the drizzle
Juice 1 lemon
50g caster sugar

For the icing
Juice 1 lemon
250-300g icing sugar 

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 170°C.

First prepare your bundt tin, by greasing and covering with granulated sugar. Set to one side.
Zest two lemons and rub into your caster sugar. Now cream together your softened butter and caster sugar, until light and fluffy. Mix in the curd cheese and crème fraiche. Now split and scrape the seeds from your vanilla pod and stir in together with the lemon juice and ground almonds.

In a separate bowl, sift together your self raising flour and salt. Add about 1/3 of your beaten eggs to your creamed butter mixture, then fold 1/3 of of the sifted flour. Repeat twice more until all your flour is incorporated. Don’t overmix at this stage.

​Taking a spoonful at a time, arrange about a third of your cake mixture evenly over the base of your bundt tin.  Now in small regular dollops, smear a tablespoon of lemon curd around the top of the mix. Cover with another third of the cake mix and repeat with another tablespoon of lemon curd. Finally, cover with the final third of the mix. Your cake batter should come ¾ up the bundt tin, leaving about 3-4cm at the top for the cake to rise in the oven. Don’t overfill your tin.

​Place in the oven and bake for 50-60 minutes, checking for browning after about 40 minutes. You may need to cover or rotate in the oven at this stage. Your cake will be ready when the internal temperature reaches 96°C. Don’t let it go much over 100°C or it will begin to dry out. If you don’t possess a digital thermometer, use the clean skewer test to check when your cake is ready.

Whilst the cake is baking you can prepare the drizzle. Mix together the juice of one lemon and 50g caster sugar.
When your cake is cooked, leave it for about 10 minutes in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack. Using a spoon, drizzle your lemon mix evenly over your cake and leave to cool completely.

Finally, when completely cool, prepare your final glaze by mixing together the juice of one lemon and about 250-300g of icing sugar. You are looking for as thick a glaze as you can manage to still ‘pour’ from a spoon. If you take it too far and it will only ‘dollop’, add a tiny bit more liquid – lemon if you have it, water, if not – and get it back to a pouring consistency. Do not make this ahead of time as it will set.

​Once you are happy with the consistency, pour or spoon over the top of your bundt. Don’t worry too much about evenness, the more rustic the better. And on that note, now is your chance to cover up any slip ups you may have had getting your bundt out of the tin! Believe me, no one will care once they start tucking in.

Finally, decorate with any flowers or edible greenery in your garden or window box. I particularly like rosemary with lemon cake, but you could equally use lavender or violets at this time of year.