Hummingbird Cafe Lemon Loaf

Having been called slack for not posting enough this week (:O - the nerve!) I'm writing about something Pooey wants me to write about.

The Hummingbird Cafe is apparently a famous bakery in London that sells US-style cupcakes, cookies and other sweet goodies. She bought their cookbook and sent it back to me via Smeemail so that I, being the better baker of the two of us, could practice making the goodies in anticipation of her return.

I finally decided to make the lemon loaf because it seemed pretty easy but also because I had a loaf pan that I'd purchased by never used (family are fans of cup cakes rather than loaves). After taking note of the corrections that had been inserted in the form of an A4 sheet, I made the loaf (which was pretty easy), but I'll admit to being a bit disappointed when it came out.

I was expecting something more like the lemon loaf me and Pooey had from Peyton and Byrne when we had afternoon tea at the National Gallery :(. Even though I was expecting it to be like a lemon-flavoured loaf of bread, it was quite dense and the crust was bordering on burned. Ma liked it a lot though. My faith was further shaken when I looked for some online reviews and found a lot of people said the recipes were incorrect and unworkable unless you were an experienced baker :( (although others were sparkling).

However, the next day I decided to take half of the loaf and test it on my lab (heheh, lab testing :P). Mischka, Dr. V., DG, Jan, the Histo chicas and IT chicos all gave it the thumbs up. So how? Well I think I'll fiddle with the timing and temperature to stop the loaf from reaching that just a touch of burn level, but I suppose it was okay. I have a feeling though that if I were to know what the loaf is like when it comes out of the shop, I might be painfully unimpressed.

Anyway, since it was given approval, I'll try some more recipes before giving the book the yay or nay status *thumbs up*.