Cook this for Valentine's Day: Limoncello Drizzle

With that freezing January behind us, along with being able to feel our fingers again, we can now also feel the love in the air… after all, it is Valentine’s week!

Our team have had an incredibly busy start to the year, and we are immensely proud to announce that we have written brand new menus for this year, with some classic flavours and some quirky modern twists too.

When creating over 50 new dishes for our customers to choose from, we try to accommodate a lot of thoughts and requests from customers at previous events.

That way, we know that the dishes we’re creating are not only current, but they’ll be popular too!

All dishes follow our mantra of using the very best local, seasonally fresh produce available, and we look forward to sharing some of these recipes with you in these very pages throughout the year, as well as video recipes on our website (bealesgourmet.com).

To start, this month I wanted to share our Limoncello Drizzle – a modern Italian twist on the classic lemon drizzle cake, featuring one of my favourite liqueurs.

Have a go at recreating this and don’t forget to post your version on our Facebook page.

Have a dish that you’d like to see on a future menu? Send us your suggestions via our Facebook page or tweet us @bealesgourmet1.

Stay warm out there!

Limoncello Drizzle

Serves 4 people

• 2 free range eggs (beaten)
• 125g self-raising flour (sifted)
• 125g castor sugar
• 125g unsalted butter (softened)
• Vanilla seeds or essence
• Zest from 1 organic lemon
• Dash of milk (optional)

For the lemon syrup

• Juice from 2 organic lemons
• 100g icing sugar
• 25ml Limoncello

For the drizzle icing

• Juice from 1 organic lemon
• 125g icing sugar (or enough to form a thick icing)

Lemon curd

• 2 organic lemons (zest & juice)
• 125g castor sugar
• 2 free range eggs plus 1 yolk
• 75g unsalted butter

Decoration

• Edible flowers
• Lemon balm herb
• Winter berry coulis

To make the lemon cake, cream the soft butter and castor sugar together and incorporate a beaten egg before finally adding the sifted flour, the vanilla seeds or essence and the lemon zest.

Top tip, when adding the egg (to stop the mix from curdling), add a teaspoon of flour each time you add some egg. If your mix is too stiff, add some milk to make a smooth, silky cake mix.

Spoon your mixture into your moulds or cake tin and cook in a pre-heated oven on 170 degrees centigrade for approximately 40 minutes. Cooking times will vary depending on the size and shape of your cake tin or moulds.

The best way to test if your cake is cooked is to stick a skewer in the centre of the cake and when you take it out the skewer should be clean with no cake mix stuck to it.

If the cake is getting dark on the top, cover it with foil and turn the oven down to continue cooking until ready.

While the cake is cooking, prepare your syrup, which you will brush or pour over your cake once cooked. Squeeze the juice from the zested lemon (the lemon you used to make the cake) then squeeze the second lemon into a small sauce pan. Add the icing sugar and bring to the boil. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside.

Next job is to make the lemon curd. Over a pan of boiling water (bain marie), in a rounded bowl, melt the butter with the lemon juice, zest and sugar.

When melted, add the eggs, yolk and cook out, stirring with a spoon for approximately 15-20 minutes. The mixture needs to be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Chill immediately and stir occasionally whilst cooking.

Then make the drizzle by squeezing another lemon in the bowl, then add the icing sugar and whisk until a smooth, thick white icing has formed. Spoon into a piping bag to use later.

When the cakes are cooked, prick the cake or cakes with a skewer and brush or pour over the syrup. Keep doing this until all the syrup has soaked into the cake(s). Set aside to cool.

To finish the dish, cut the cakes into 3 (you can make as many layers as you like). Fill each layer with the thick, cold lemon curd. Put the cake back together again.

Pipe the drizzle onto the plate and add some dots of winter berry coulis (to make this, bring to the boil some frozen winter berries and icing sugar.

Then liquidize and pass through a fine sieve and chill) Add your filled limoncello drizzle cake to the plate and decorate with lemon balm and edible flowers (yellow flowers work best!) Bon Appetit!