When we were studying in Flagstaff, Arnaud and I were huge fans of Starbucks’ Lemon Loaf, a lemon cake with a ridiculously delicious lemon icing. Our first year at NAU, we used to go to Starbucks and get a slice of this cake, but not too often since we had to pay for it ourselves and were little students on a budget. Only to find out, beginning of our third semester there, that as student athletes on a full scholarship, we were actually offered a full meal plan since the beginning! That’s right, we wasted a whole year of free food on campus -us little foreign students who had never heard of such a thing as a meal plan before, we never even thought about checking if we had dining dollars available on our student ID. Still now, it makes me wanna cry (and laugh) every time I think about it!

Anyway, when we went back to Belgium, I was missing that lemon loaf very much and tried to create a copycat recipe, and it turned out being actually even better than what I could remember. Here it is for you to try!

For 2 small or 1 really large cake pan

• Zest and juice of 4 organic lemons
• 3 ⅓ (400gr) flour
• ½ tbsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks – 220gr) butter, softened
• 3 cups (600gr) sugar
• 6 eggs
• 4/5 cup (185gr) cream cheese
• 1 ⅔ cups (40cl) heavy whipping cream
• Icing: 2 lemons + 2 cups (250gr) icing sugar

Preheat oven to 170°C/340°F. Grease and flour the cake pan.

In a small bowl, stir sugar and lemon zest (now this just smells too good!). In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Beat softened butter with a mixer for 2′. Progressively add the sugar while beating. Add the eggs, one at a time, still beating between each addition. While slowly stirring, progressively add the flour mix, then cream cheese, whipping cream, and lemon juice.

Pour batter into cake pan, and bake in the oven for about 30 to 45′, until a knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan before removing from pan.

Make the icing: squeeze the juice out of the 2 lemons. Whisk confectionner sugar with lemon juice (start with only 1 tbsp juice, the add the rest a few drops at a time if needed) in a bowl until smooth but still pretty thick (if too runny, the icing won’t stay properly on top of the cake). Spoon evenly over the cake, and let set about 30′ before serving, cut in small large cubes.