This One-Bowl Lemon Dessert Is Paul Hollywood’s “Favorite Cake of All Time”

Like the Battenberg cake and the Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle is one of the most iconic British cakes. The loaf has a bold citrus flavor, a moist, buttery crumb, and a signature drizzle of lemon juice and sugar that crystallizes into a satisfyingly crunchy topping. It’s a staple for British home bakers and is often sold at bakeries and coffee shops in the UK. It’s so popular that one of Britain’s most well-known bakers, chef and Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood, called it his “favorite cake of all time” in his 2022 cookbook BAKE. “The perfect lemon drizzle has a light and airy sponge and a sharp, zesty crunchy topping,” he wrote. “It’s a total classic.”

Traditionally, lemon drizzle cake is baked in a loaf pan. There are, however, many variations, and it isn’t uncommon to see round or square cakes in the UK. It’s a simple dessert that requires little more than flour, eggs, butter, sugar, and, of course, lemons. Plus, the batter comes together in one bowl and requires only about 10 minutes of prep time—I think the hardest part may be waiting for the cake to cool and develop its crackly topping. I may not be Paul Hollywood, but my tips below will help you bake a handshake-worthy lemon drizzle cake.

How to Make a Classic Lemon Drizzle Cake

Soften the lemons—and use a juicer if you have one. The cake and drizzle require a good amount—more than a quarter cup—of lemon juice. To make the lemons easier to juice, I roll them against a hard surface, which softens the rinds and the fruit’s membranes, making light work of all the juicing required. (If you have a lemon juicer, this is a good time to use it.)

Use room temperature ingredients. To aerate the cake, I beat butter and sugar together until it’s pale and fluffy, a process that helps create pockets of air in the batter. To do this well, it’s key to use room temperature butter softened to about 60º to 65ºF (16º to 18ºC). As former Serious Eats editor Stella wrote in her vanilla butter cake recipe and primer on creaming butter and sugar, this is the temperature at which butter is most pliable, which guarantees that your cake will have an even crumb. This, however, also requires that your eggs be at room temperature. “If the eggs are much colder, they’ll cause the butter to seize, curdling the batter,” Stella notes.  “This breaks the emulsion, producing a cake with an uneven crumb (think weird pockets and tunnels, streaks of gumminess, or low volume overall.)” 

Poke holes in your cake. Pricking the top of the baked cake with a toothpick, wooden skewer, or cake tester helps the drizzle sink deeper into the cake, ensuring that each bite is moist and bursting with citrus flavor. 

Drizzle generously, then let the cake sit. To make the drizzle, you simply have to whisk together granulated sugar and fresh lemon juice. You don’t want the sugar to dissolve here: It should look thick, wet, and grainy. As the mixture soaks into the cake and cools on top of it, the sugar granules will crystallize into a sweet, crackly coating. Granulated sugar is the best type to use here; though the cake will still be delicious with a finer sugar like caster or superfine, those sugars won’t have large enough granules to form the crunchy topping.

I recommend making the drizzle in a liquid measuring cup, as that will make it easier to pour over the cake. If the sugar starts to sink to the bottom of the cup, just stir to reincorporate it into the juice, and be sure to use a flexible spatula to scrape out every last bit onto the cake. Let the cake sit for at least three hours—this will give the drizzle more time to settle and soak into the loaf, and guarantees that each bite is moist, bursting with tangy lemon flavor, and ready to earn you star baker accolades. 

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