Lavender Loaf

Baked this over last weekend. It has the texture of butter cake with the fragrance of lavender. The loaf tasted even better when a slice of the cake was eaten with the sugar lemon glaze and lemon zest sprinkled over the slice.

Before baking this cake I had prepared lavender sugar and lavender icing sugar about a week in advance. I just sprinkled a tsp of the lavender flowers into each of the red cap cookie plastic bottles which I stored the sugars. This is to allow the lavender fragrance to infuse into the sugars. I used these sugars to bake the loaf and make the icing glaze.

Ingredient:

300 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
half tsp baking soda
half tsp salt
1 tsp dried lavender flowers
220 g unsalted butter
200 g lavender caster sugar
2 tbsp Irish Cream Bailey
4 eggs, beaten
1 tub sour cream (200 mls)
quarter cup UHT milk

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180 degree C and line two loaf pans (8"x4"x2").
Sieve the flour, baking powder and baking soda together.
Beat the eggs and add in the salt and Irish Cream Bailey.
Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
Add in the sour cream and stir till well mixed.
Add in the flour, egg mixture and milk in three portions and mix till well blended.
Stir in the tsp of dried lavender flowers.
Portion the batter into the two loaf pans and bake for 55 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.
Cool loaves on a rack and remove cakes from pan to cool completely.
Drizzle the lemon glaze icing over the cooled loaf and sprinkle some lemon zest on top of the loaf.

Lavender lemon glaze
3 tbsp of lemon juice
3/4 cup lavender icing sugar

Stir the above two ingredients till well blended.
You may want to add a little purple color to make lavender color glaze.