Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Cream the butter and ¾ cup sugar, and add the lemon zest. Add the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of the flour for each. Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and, finally, the lemon juice. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with sugar (about 2 tablespoons should do it) as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in the pan before turning out.

VARIATION

I love a good old-fashioned seed cake; if you do too, add a couple of teaspoons of caraway to this batter. For a lemon poppyseed cake, add the juice of another half lemon and a tablespoon or two of poppyseeds. And I once came across an expensive but tempting curiosity: tiny dried strawberries. I upped the liquid to the juice of 2 lemons and folded in about a cup of the strawberries. It was a wholly successful experiment.