Grease your 2lb loaf tin - or line with greaseproof paper.
Beat your butter and sugar together until light and fluffy and pale yellow in colour.
Gently beat in your pink gin and lemon zest until combined.
Sift together your flour and baking powder into a separate bowl.
Add ⅓ of your beaten eggs and mix on a medium speed for a few rotations.
Add in 3 desert spoonfuls of your sifted flour and baking powder and mix again for a few rotations on a medium speed until just combined.
Repeat the above steps twice more until all of the eggs have been beaten in.
Add in the rest of your flour and mix on a medium setting until all the flour has been incorporated, scraping down the mixing bowl with a spatula mid way to ensure everything gets fully mixed in.
Gently fold in your poppy seeds using a large metal spoon.
Add the mixture to your loaf tin.
Using the back of a metal desert spoon, gently spread the mixture out so that it evenly fills the tin.
Bake in the centre of your oven for about 45 minutes or until a metal skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
Pink gin syrup drizzle
5 minutes before you cake is due to come out of the oven make your pink gin drizzle
Add your sugar and water to a small saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves, stirring constantly.
Bring to a gentle boil and and simmer for 1 minute.
Remove from the heat and mix in 1 tablespoon of pink gin.
As soon as it is out of the oven, prick the cake all over, top and bottom, with a skewer.
"Paint" over your syrup and gin drizzle using a pastry brush both on the top and the bottom of the cake.
Allow the cake to cool fully.
Pink gin icing
Sift your icing sugar into a bowl.
Mix in your lemon juice and pink gin.
Pour evenly over your cake, starting in the middle so the icing spreads out and falls down the sides of the cake.
Pink gin syrup drizzle- adding the pink gin once the water and sugar has simmered and become syrupy ensures you don't lose any of the alcoholStorage: keep in an airtight container, this cakes lasts for about 5 days. It also freezes well.