Heat the oven to 180C/160C Fan and line three 20cm/8inch sandwich cake tins with baking parchment – leave to the side.
In a stand mixer, beat together the butter and caster sugar for a few minutes until light and fluffy.
Add in the flour, eggs, baking powder, flavouring if using and lime and beat again briefly until combined – try not to overbeat!
Divide the mixture between the three tins and smooth it over – bake for 25-30minutes until the cakes are golden and when the cake springs back (skewer should also come out clean)!
Once baked, leave on the side for now, in the tin.
Whilst cooling for the 10 minutes, make the drizzle.
Add your caster sugar, gin, and tonic to a small pan.
Heat on a low-medium whilst stirring, and wait for the sugar to dissolve. Once dissolved, turn off the heat.
Poke your cake lightly with a cake skewer/fork, and then drizzle over the drizzle. Leave the cake to cool fully in the tin.
For the Buttercream
Beat the butter with an electric mixer for a couple of minutes to loosen it – gradually beat in the icing sugar until well combined (this can take up to 5 minutes).
Add in the tonic & gin one tablespoon of each at a time, and beat fully each time. The mixture will be slightly slacker than usual, but you want the flavour so be aware!
Alternatively, use the gin & tonic flavouring with the butter and sugar instead.
To Decorate
Add a layer of the cake to your plate/board and pipe on some of the buttercream.
Add on the second layer and pipe on buttercream again, and then the third layer. If you just want to use buttercream then decorate the top, but I did buttercream and icing so I piped the leftover buttercream around the edges.
Mix the icing with the gin and fill in the top with it, and then sprinkle over the lime zest and add lime slices if you wish!
Enjoy!
Notes
I found my gin & tonic flavouring from SAINSBURYS. You can use it in place of any actual gin if you like!
The icing part on top is completely optional, you can just use buttercream, but it gives a nice strong gin flavour.
YOU MUST USE ACTUAL BUTTER FOR BUTTERCREAM – I can’t stress this enough. I get comments often about ‘why is my buttercream so runny’ and 9/10 times its because the incorrect butter was used. You can’t use stork, or a spread, or a substitute for buttercream. This is even more important for this recipe as you are adding more liquid than usual.
I used Gordons gin for these cupcakes, and Fever Tree tonic as it has a strong flavour. You can use any you like, but better quality ones with a better and stronger flavour are important.
You can use anything to decorate it with, but I love a wedge or two of lime with my G&Ts so used lime slices!
These cake will last in a container for 3 days at room temperature!