Lorraine Pascale's Blueberry and Limoncello Drizzle Cake

 

I have a great relationship with my personal trainer. She pushes me hard, but not too hard; she's encouraging, we have a good chat while I'm working out and she isn't draconian when it comes to diet. To prove th point, she hinted that since I like baking I could make her a cake for her birthday, which was the day after mine.

She'd told me she liked loaf cakes and I decided I wanted to make something that wasn't too unhealthy, so would involve less sugar than some cakes, not have piles of frosting, and include fruit but have an indulgent quality at the same time - it was her 40th birthday so a special occasion after all.

I turned to Lorraine Pascale's book A Lighter Way to Bake and found a recipe for a blueberry and limoncello drizzle cake, which ticked all those boxes - it wasn't a loaf cake but as it wasn't filled I decided there was no reason why I couldn't bake it in a loaf tin.

The recipe can be found online here; I had some blueberries in the freezer from a previous recipe and since I don't like them this was a good opportunity to use them up; I already had about a quarter of a bottle of limoncello left, I think from the Christmas before last, so the only ingredients I therefore had to buy was a little tub of yogurt and two lemons.

Making the batter

Adding the blueberries

ready to go in the oven

Here's the cake!

about to make the icing

drizzling over the icing

The cake took a bit longer to bake than the time given in the recipe; if you do it in a loaf tin the best thing is to keep testing it with a skewer.

I gave it to my personal trainer the day before her birthday when we had a gym session (actually on my birthday, I'm that dedicated!) and she said afterwards she and her friends really enjoyed it.

This isn't the cheapest recipe to make but for me it was pretty frugal as I was using up blueberries and limoncello I already had, which is quite a thrifty approach, so I'm sending this to Credit Crunch Munch. This month the challenge is hosted by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy and was devised by Helen and Camilla.