Easy Lime Drizzle Cake with Lime Frosting

Tangy, fresh and deliciously sweet and moist, this easy lime drizzle cake absolutely melts in the mouth and offers an alternative to lemon drizzle cake.

Rather excited about this one. This cake is just as amazing in every way as it’s sister cake, the famous lemon drizzle. But...there are not that many recipes out there for lime drizzle cake, for some incomprehensible reason. I feel like I have stumbled onto a hidden treasure which I need to share with you lovely people. Because this is one amazing cake.

This is a lime drizzle cake recipe to impress people with. They will never guess just now incredibly EASY it is to create.

There is little more frustrating in life than a dry drizzle cake. Am I right?!? I know it's hardly up there with creating a vaccine for the pandemic or world peace, but hey it's relevant. In my world.

After all, you invest time, money and effort in baking up a cake so you want a fab result. A friend mentioned to me that she has tried so many recipes and yet her drizzle cakes are always dry.

Well, I like a challenge and so I invested a lot of time and experimentation to come up with this recipe.

Of course, you can quite easily turn this cake into a lemon and lime drizzle cake. Just switch the fruit zest and/or juices around however you choose as long as you use don't use more in quantity.

Why is this lime drizzle cake so good?

Many recipes, whether for lime or lemon drizzle cakes, often use the standard pound loaf ingredients. So we are talking the same amounts of self-raising flour, sugar and butter plus eggs. Personally, I always found that the end result was great but not nearly as moist as I'd hoped it would be.

Bring on the star of the show .... natural yoghurt: want to be sure your cake is a moist one? Adding yoghurt will do the trick every time. The moisture and fat it adds to the mix ensures this is so. And, as if that isn't contribution enough, it also ensures the cake is fluffy and light too.

Fresh limes: I recommend always using fresh limes (or indeed fresh lemons) every time you bake. Fresh lime juice has the fresh zingy flavour you really need in this cake to make sure the flavour stands out. Plus, of course, fresh limes = no preservatives = far better all round.

Your limes should be bright and beautiful with just a little 'give' when you squeeze them. If their colour is muted and/or they are as hard as a golf ball don't use them. Or maybe you can use them as a golf ball 🤔 ⛳. Taste-wise, they will be bitter. Also... don't be tempted to literally squeeze every last drop of juice out of your lime, because the last bit will also be bitter. I used to do this all of the time, with an undefeated determination to torture every last dropout. You live and learn.

How to make easy lime drizzle cake

You may have guessed...it's easy peasy!

So, as I always say, prep your ingredients first, it makes life much easier and you never forget to add anything. I speak from experience here.

Set your oven to 350°F/180°C/160°C/Gas mark 4.

Prep your loaf tin with greaseproof paper by cutting a length that is as wide as the widest side of your tin. Make sure it is long enough to cover the tin and leave about 1.5 inches on each side, so you can hold it to lift the cake out. So for my loaf tin that was a piece measuring 22cm x 32cm.

Grease the tin all over lightly so that the greaseproof paper has something to stick to. Then just drape the greaseproof paper in. This will leave the two smaller tin ends exposed but as long as you grease them, they will be fine. Before you remove your baked lime drizzle cake from the tin, just edge a knife down the exposed sides to ensure the lime drizzle cake hasn't stuck, so that it comes out of the tin easily.

First of all:
bring your eggs, yoghurt and butter up to room temperature;
sift your flour, salt and baking powder together;
mix your yoghurt with your lime zest and lime juice;
beat your eggs together with a fork or small whisk.

Then it really is just a case of bringing everything together.

Start by whizzing your butter around in your mixer until really nice and soft. It should be pale and the consistency easily spreadable. Tip in your sugar and whizz away again. There isn't much butter to sugar ratio so the two will just form a paste-like consistency.

Add in your yoghurt mixture and whizz on a medium setting until incorporated. Don't be worried about the clumpy look of the mixture, it will sort itself out in the next stage.

Give your bowl a wipe down with your spatula to ensure the mixture at the bottom is incorporated.

And the next stage is to simply add in ⅓ of your beaten egg along with a couple of large spoonfuls of the sifted flour mix and give it a whizz on a medium setting. Repeat twice more until the eggs have been used up. Add the rest of the flour and just gently mix in on a low setting, to avoid losing air from the mixture.

Again ensure you wipe the bowl down with a spatula to ensure all of the ingredients are mixed. You don't want the surprise of finding unmixed mixture sitting at the bottom.

Tip the lot into your prepped loaf tin and bake for about 40 minutes until golden and cooked through.

Lime drizzle syrup

About 10 minutes before your cake is about to come out of the oven make your lime syrup. Simply mix together your water and sugar in a small saucepan using a small whisk and heating over a low heat. Once you can no longer see any sugar granules on the bottom of the pan the syrup is ready. Remove immediately from the heat and mix in your lime juice.

As soon as your cake comes out of the oven, prick it all over with a skewer and pour over your syrup.

Try to ensure you pour the lime syrup over evenly and, if the cake is slightly cracked on top avoid pouring too much into the crevice as this can make the top of the cake, a bit too moist.

Once the cake has cooled for a bit you can remove it from your tin.

Lime drizzle icing (frosting)

Once your lime drizzle cake is totally cool make your lime drizzle icing. This is simply icing sugar and lime just mixed together. Pour your icing over the cake starting at the centre and allowing it to slide gently over the sides at its own pace.

For other zesty cakes try my delicious Almond, blueberry and limoncello bundt cake. Please rate this recipe and comment below, I'd love to get your feedback 😍

📖 Recipe