Amaretto and Lemon Birthday Bundt

The more posts I write about my friends, the more I realise that none of us are a full shilling, as my grandad would say.

Understated, shy, quiet, beige... said nobody ever about Anna. She's my kind of odd lad; she has lilac hair, a plethora of brightly coloured tattoos, and she's probably the most enthusiastic Zumba teacher you will ever meet. Oh, and I really like the way she says fluf-eee in a Swedish accent. She's actually Swedish, not a weirdo. Well, she is a weirdo, but for totally different reasons.

It was her birthday recently. She's been a bloody diamond with me recently, and always seems to know the appropriate action to take; sometimes it's an emergency kitten GIF at 11:30pm, or a slab of cake delivered to my desk, with no words, just a look*.

Partial to a splash of Amaretto, I decided to do an almond and lemon flavoured cake, laced with Anna's favourite tipple. Any cake where you add ground almonds ends up being moist and slightly heavy in weight, yet strangely light in texture. I needed something a bit sturdy to hold the weight of all the glittery, sugary stuff I topped it with!

Not cutting the cake at work made Anna the most unpopular person since the fool who 'parked in the god damn barrier' incident of 2015. Does Anna strike you as someone who cares? Absolutely not. She skipped out of that office, and even managed not to get the kids drunk off icing. Winning.

Stole this right of her Facebook, I did.

Ingredients:

• 225g butter
• 450g golden caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 330g Homepride plain flour
• 25g ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200ml lemon yoghurt 
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 5 tbsp Amaretto

To decorate:

• Everything.

Method:

• Preheat the oven to gas 3/160 c
• Prepare a regular sized bundt tin - 2.4l, 10 cup, 10 inch with Cake Release spray/melted butter, and dust with flour. 
• Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
• In a separate bowl, measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
• Pour the yoghurt, vanilla extract and Amaretto into a jug.
• Sift in a third of the flour mix followed by half the yoghurt. Repeat this until everything is combined.
• Give everything a quick mix on a low speed for about 10 seconds.
• Tip your batter into your prepared bundt tin.
• Bake in the centre of the oven for about 1 hour 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. 
• Leave the cake to cool for ten minutes before removing from the tin.
• When the cake is fully cool, decorate however pleases you. I made my icing out of icing sugar mixed with Amaretto, and threw the party aisle of Tesco at it... 

* The look meaning, I couldn't give three shits about your gym plan, you need cake. Eat it. Now.

Bloggers: Please respect the fact I am sharing my own ideas and basic recipe. Blood, sweat and many tears have gone into getting this right, so you may enjoy a perfect bundt. If you wish to re-blog a recipe from these variations, please credit my blog and link to this original post rather than pasting the recipe on your own page.