This is my very own twist on a traditional lemon drizzle cake (my favourite type of cake), with orange instead of lemon and olive oil instead of butter, with the addition of Thai basil to create an aniseed-esque complement to the orange, somewhat reminiscent of a gibassier. It is very, very easy to make—easier than a normal lemon drizzle cake, in fact, with the cake batter easily coming together in a quarter of an hour.
Use standard plain flour, which is fairly low in gluten (generally 9 or 10g per 100g).
I use caster sugar, which is finer than granulated sugar. You want to use white sugar—brown sugar would lend too dark a taste to the cake.
No need to use anything fancy, but do use olive oil.
I use medium hens eggs—you don’t need to be too precise with the size.
Make sure it’s in date—baking powder can lose its lift.
Thai Basil has a flavour somewhere in-between regular basil and aniseed. Regular basil would be a pleasant substitute, but would lack the aniseed quality that complements the orange so well.
Just regular unwaxed oranges. If you can only get waxed oranges, rub them all over with a tea towel before grating them.
Just a regular lemon. We only need the juice here, not the rind.
Icing sugar is a very fine form of white sugar mixed with a small amount of cornflour. Regular sugar is not an appropriate substitute.
1. Grease and line the loaf tin.
2. Preheat the oven to 180 C, or 160 C if using a fan oven.
3. Mix together the flour and baking powder.
4. Remove the Thai basil leaves from their stalks, then finely chop.
I use a mezzaluna for this, but a sharp knife will do. You want it fairly fine, but don’t fret if it’s a little rough.
5. Grate the orange rind.
I use a box grater on top of a chopping board, which helps keep all the grated rind together. You can mix it with the Thai basil, as both ingredients are mixed in at the same time.
6. Beat the eggs, oil, and sugar together.
7. Add the chopped Thai basil and grated orange rind to the egg, oil, and sugar mixture, then beat together.
8. Add the flour and baking powder mix to the wet ingredients, then gently stir with a wooden spoon or silicon spatula until combined.
Don’t beat the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients too vigorously, and stop stirring as soon as there are no lumps of flour remaining. The batter should be quite loose, almost like a thick pancake batter.
9. Pour the batter into the lined baking tin, then place in the oven. Bake for around 45-55 minutes.
To test if a cake is baked, insert a knife or other sharp object (I use a kebab skewer) into the centre. If the knife has wet batter or moist crumbs, then the bake is not fully cooked. If it is just slightly greasy, the cake has cooked all the way through.
I generally like a fairly brown crust on my cakes, since I like the textural contrast between the dry outer crust and moist middle. If you think the cake is browning too quickly, then tent the top with foil in order to prevent further browning.
10. Remove from the oven. Prick the top of the cake all over with a cocktail stick, skewer, or other thin, sharp object. Leave to cool for five minutes, before removing from the tin to cool on a cooling rack.
To remove the cake from the tin, loosen the cake from either end (the ends which aren’t covered by the baking paper) with a thin object—a knife will do, but this can scratch the tin—I use a plastic dough scraper—then lift the loaf from the tin by pulling on the two ends of the baking paper overhang. To remove the baking paper from underneath the loaf, tip the loaf onto its side, holding it in place, while shunting the paper from underneath it with the other.
11. Sift the icing sugar until it is fine.
Icing sugar clumps together into large lumps, like cornflour. To break it up into a fine powder, place the icing sugar into a sieve, then pass it through into a bowl. This gives the icing a smooth consistency.
12. Mix together 75g of the sifted icing sugar with the orange juice to make a thin syrup. Pour all over the cake.
Make sure you pricked the cake with lots of holes in step 10, as those holes will collect the syrup and make the inside of the cake very moist.
13. Leave to cool completely.
14. Mix the rest of the sifted icing sugar (125g) with around 1 tablespoon and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice to form a thick but pourable icing.
I always struggle with getting the right consistency with the icing! Start with a small amount of lemon juice, then if it’s too thick, add a tiny bit more—I mean a tiny bit, the consistency of the icing can change from even a slight increase in liquid. If it becomes too thin, sift some more icing sugar and add it to the mix, a bit at a time. You want a thick but still pourable consistency. Lemon instead of orange provides a nice balance to the sickliness of the icing, and complements the orange flavour well.
15. Using a spoon, pour the icing over the top of the cake, letting it dribble down the sides.
16. Grate a small amount of lemon or orange rind, then sprinkle on the top as decoration.
I use a tool I don’t know the name of to produce long strips of rind, which looks very pretty. I used lemon rind here since I had no oranges left.
17. Enjoy your cake!
This cake can be easily converted into other citrus cakes—you could swap the orange rind and juice out for lemon and the Thai basil for thyme to make something somewhat closer to a traditional lemon drizzle cake, or you could even make something a bit more unusual with lime or grapefruit.