Let’s jump right into things… I’m pretty certain this is not how the cake is supposed to look. Given the ingredients I feel like this was supposed to rise more than it did and I’m not really sure what happened. Well, I do have some ideas… All of the recipes in this particular cookbook (see below for reference) call for self-rising flour, which I do not have. I created my own self-rising flour for the last recipe from this cookbook and it worked fine but maybe I missed something this time. I’m definitely willing to concede that I made a mistake calculating the DIY self-rising flour but despite that I was disappointed by this recipe; hence the lower rankings.

The recipe was easy enough to make, but if I were to make this again I would definitely cut back on the poppy seeds. The cake had a good lemon taste, but there were so many poppy seeds I felt like they dominated the rest of the cake so it was hard to really get a good sense of what it might taste like in general. That’s probably the lowest ranking I’ve ever given for taste and maybe it’s too low but considering I was super excited about this lemon cake it was a major disappointment so for full disclosure I’m judging with that in mind.

Regardless, since something messed up here I do this I’ll make this recipe again to see if I have the same issues and see what cutting back on the poppy seeds does.

Recipe used: Great British Bake-Off p. 25