World Gin Day is just around the corner (Saturday), so today’s cooking adventure needed to include gin!

I’ve made a gin drizzle cake before, the recipe came from Pudding Lane and it was brilliant but it started with weighing the eggs in the shell and used a lot of gin in the batter, I never object to using more gin but it did seem a waste as the gin flavour gets baked out and most of the flavour of the cake comes from the gin and tonic glaze.

I looked at some other recipes and then started to play. I decided that a basic french yogurt cake would make a good base. I’ve made this before and thought it would make a good cake for glaze because it’s robust and fairly neutral in flavour, I have seen this cake baked in a loaf and toasted when stale (it makes good toast!)For me, no gin and tonic is complete without lime so I added that to the mix. This is what I ended up with.

What

For the cake

• 120g plain yoghurt
• 240g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 360g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 a teaspoon salt
• zest of 2 limes
• 120ml sunflower oil

For the glaze

• 100g sugar
• 100ml gin
• 100ml tonic
• juice of 2 limes

How

1. Line an 10 inch cake tin and preheat the oven to 175C.
2. Combine yoghurt, sugar and eggs in a large bowl until well beaten.
3. Add flour, baking powder, salt and lime zest and beat.
4. Add the sunflower oil to the mixture and don’t worry that it looks like it’ll separate, just keep beating it until it’s all mixed.
5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, it’s done when a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes away clean. Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes.
6. Make the glaze. In a saucepan, gently heat the sugar, gin, tonic and lime juice until the sugar has disolved.
7. Using a fork or a skewer, make holes in the top of the cake, pour half the glaze on and leave for 30 minutes.
8. Repeat using the rest of the glaze. Sprinkle with sugar and refrigerate!