Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake

Heat the oven to 170C/340F.

Butter a 900g loaf tin and line it with baking paper. It is the same tin the everyday white tin loaf in this collection is baked in.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and fine salt together in a bowl.

Beat the softened butter and caster sugar together for 4-5 minutes, until the mixture is pale, light and visibly grown in volume. The butter has to take a fingerprint without effort; butter straight from the fridge will not hold the air that raises this cake.

Beat in the eggs one at a time, letting each disappear before the next goes in.

Add a spoonful of the flour mixture and beat it smooth again if the batter curdles at any point.

Beat in the lemon zest.

Fold in the flour mixture in two additions.

Stop as soon as the last dry streaks go. Beating flour into a creamed batter builds gluten, and the crumb turns tight and chewy.

Fold through the milk, until the batter drops from the spoon in a slow, heavy ribbon.

Scrape the batter into the tin.

Level the top.

Bake for 50-55 minutes, until the loaf is deep gold, split along the middle, and a skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean. Unlike the brownies, this one wants the skewer clean.

Stir the granulated sugar and the lemon juice together in a small bowl while the cake is in its last few minutes.

Stop while the mixture is a grainy, pourable slurry. Do not warm it or work it until it runs clear, because a dissolved sugar is a glaze and the crust is gone.

Prick the hot loaf all over with a fine skewer, going about halfway down.

Spoon the drizzle over the whole surface while the cake is straight out of the oven and still in its tin. The heat pulls the juice down into the crumb and strands the sugar on top, where it dries into a crust. Poured onto a cold cake the whole lot soaks in, and you get a wet, sunken top instead.

Cool the cake completely in the tin, at least an hour and a half. It genuinely needs the full time, because a loaf lifted out warm takes the drizzle crust away with the paper.

Lift the loaf out by the paper.

Cut into 10 slices.