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Week 3: Lemon Buttercream Cake

January 22, 2012 by Nina Spezzaferro

Friday was my friend Talia’s birthday and this was her cake. Talia works with me and also makes beautiful, handmade jewelry under her Piedra Studio brand. You should check it out.

Talia and I love to muse about our favorite things, which in no particular order include cruising, real estate, home shopping, reality television, antique jewelry, faux fur… I could on forever. But something we differ on is preferred cake flavors. As you probably deduced from my birthday Chocolate Bacon Cake, I prefer fatty, heavy, chocolatey cakes. Talia prefers light, elegant, sophisticated flavors. And that’s why I was more than happy to bake her this Lemon Buttercream Birthday Cake, because I want my 52 cakes to have variety and this is a cake I’d never choose for myself.

Some lemon cake recipes call for store-bought lemon curd. I’ve noticed that even the recipes that call for homemade lemon curd include reviews from home bakers who used store-bought lemon curd to save time. So I planned to use store-bought lemon curd for this cake until Talia went to pick some up for me and realized that they include egg yolks, which when you think about how long the jars of lemon curd sit on grocery store shelves, can be kind of gross. So I opted for homemade lemon curd for this cake. And while it’s easy to make, it does need to sit for a couple hours before being used so I made it first.

What is lemon curd? I can’t think of any other way to describe it than lemon jelly. It’s very sweet and tart.

Lemon zest, fresh lemon juice, corn starch and butter are combined in a medium saucepan. Then beaten egg yolks get mixed in. It requires a lot of whisking. It’s a good thing I’ve been taking Pilates classes. Once the hot lemon curd is thoroughly mixed, I poured it into a bowl to cool a bit.

Look how smooth and delightful that looks? After it cooled for about 10 minutes, I covered the bowl in plastic wrap, pressing the plastic wrap directly on top of the lemon curd so it wouldn’t form a “skin” (bleck!). Then I popped it into the fridge to cool completely for a couple of hours.

The next step was the cake. Here’s my mise en place.

As you can probably tell, the ingredients are pretty simple and the cake itself contains no lemon. I figured the lemon curd filling and the lemon buttercream frosting would be enough lemon, so this is a basic, white cake. The first step was to cream the room temperature butter with the sugar until it was light and fluffy.

Then the eggs were beaten in with the vanilla extract. The final step was to mix in the flour and milk in small increments. I chose to use a spatula to mix the final ingredients together because I didn’t want to over mix the batter. This is what it looked like when all combined.

Then it was time to christen my new cake pans. When baking my Chocolate Bacon Cake in my 9″ pans, I realized the pans had slanted sides, making them not ideal for stacked layer cakes. So I treated myself to a set of two round 8″ x 1.5″ nonstick pans (although they appear to be 2″ high), which happened to be on sale at Sur La Table. Score! I also utilized my handy dandy cake pan strips, which are dampened just before they’re wrapped around the cake pans. This was my second time using them and I definitely notice a difference in how much less the layers dome up as they bake, making them a must-have tool for layer cakes. I also lined the prepared pans with parchment rounds.

In hindsight, this should have been my first clue that there wasn’t enough batter for 2 full layers. You’ll see the batter doesn’t come up very high in the pan. But I thought, oh, they’ll rise, it will be fine! The cakes baked 25 minutes in my oven. Here they are flipped out of their pans.

Ya see? they’re a little bit thin. And the recipe I planned to make required that each layer be cut in half horizontally, resulting in four layers. So I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I should bother with the four layers.

And then I distracted myself by making the lemon buttercream frosting. One thing I learned is that lemons should not be zested ahead of time. When I zested some lemon to make the lemon curd, I thought I’d just zest some extra so I wouldn’t have to zest more for the lemon buttercream, but when it came time to make the buttercream, about 90 minutes later, the extra zest had dried up and I had to zest some more. Lesson learned.

This is really just a basic buttercream recipe that uses lemon juice and lemon zest instead of vanilla extract.

Then my mind wandered back to the dilemma about the layers I thought maybe I ought to just keep the two layers and fill the middle with the lemon curd. But I reasoned the lemon curd wasn’t voluminous enough to really support the second layer. So I pushed on and very carefully split each of these short layers into two. I’m not going to lie; it was scary.

Then it was assembly time. I recently picked up a baker’s turntable at my local baker’s supply shop. It only cost about $12. Since this cake was coming to work with me the next morning, I also picked up a cake board and box. I highly recommend these professional tools because it makes transporting the cake to its final destination much easier and you don’t have to schlep a cake keeper back home. Also, it makes the cake look REALLY professional and, in my opinion, expensive! I covered the cardboard cake board in foil, shiny side out.

Something I learned from watching hours and hours of cake shows on television and instructional videos online is that a dab of buttercream in the middle of the cake board helps “glue” the bottom layer to the surface. Then I placed the bottom layer on top of the board on the turntable. And onto that went the first layer of lemon curd.

So far, so good. Then I placed the second layer on top. And on top of that went a thin layer of lemon buttercream and that was when the first layer of lemon curd started to ooze out, which would be cool if this was a rustic layer cake. But no, this cake was going to get a smooth coat of lemon buttercream on top! So I did my best to scrape it away with my offset spatula.

On top went the third layer and on top of that went the second layer of lemon curd. And the last step was the fourth cake layer. You can see how thin the 2nd and third layers are.

Now is when I should have popped the layers into the fridge for 30 minutes or so to set. But it was getting late and that smart step hadn’t occurred to me so I went ahead and frosted the whole thing. And this part took forever. I was trying to achieve just the right amount of frosting – not too much, not too little. And I wanted it to be as smooth as possible. But as hard as I tried, some of the layers seemed to still be visible through the buttercream. I figured I’d just cover it up with some thin, sliced lemon.

And to cope with the not-so-smooth top, I used a $2 tool, also from the baker’s supply shop. It looks like a triangle. Each side has different sized teeth. I swirled the medium sized teeth side around the top to achieve the ridges. In the pic below you can see what I mean about the layers peeking through the buttercream on the upper, lefthand side of the cake.

When I went to place the cake in its box, I realized the cake weighed… a lot. I worried there was too much filling. But luckily, it made it to the office in one piece and my arms did not buckle under the immense weight.

Here’s how it looked after it was served.

The interesting thing was the middle layers were so thin, they kind of jelled together with all the lemon curd and lemon buttercream. The cake was a little dense and not quite as light and fluffy as I’d hoped. I really can’t give the taste a fair verdict since, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not  lemon cake kind of person. But the lemon-cake-eating people who tried it seemed to like it, so I guess it turned out alright.

Lemon Buttercream Cake
 
Recipe Type: Cake
Author: Nina Spezzaferro
Prep time: 1 hour
Cook time: 40 mins
Total time: 1 hour 40 mins
Serves: 12
This is actually a white cake with lemon curd filling, frosted with lemon buttercream. If using lemon slices as garnish, I recommend purchasing 7 medium lemons to use for the zest, juice and garnish.
Ingredients
  • LEMON CURD FILLING
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tbs fresh, grated lemon zest
  • 1 tbs cornstarch
  • 6 tbs butter
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 4 egg yolks, lightly beaten
  • WHITE CAKE
  • 2 cups cake flour
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), room temperature
  • 1 tsp salt (eliminate if using salted butter)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • VANILLA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING
  • 1 lb box confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 cup butter (2 sticks), room temperature
  • 2 tbs fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
  • 2 tbs heavy cream
Instructions
  1. FOR LEMON CURD FILLING: In medium saucepan over medium-high heat combine 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1 tbs lemon zest, and 1 tbs cornstarch. Stir until smooth.
  2. Mix in 6 tbs butter and 3/4 cup sugar, stirring constantly.
  3. Bring to a boil and ensure all butter has melted.
  4. In a small bowl, beat egg yolks with whisk. Whisk a small amount of hot lemon mixture into the bowl.
  5. Pour egg mixture into sauce pan, reduce heat to medium-low and whisk for about 4 minutes.
  6. Pour mixture into bowl. Let cool about 10 minutes.
  7. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, pressing it onto the top of the lemon curd to avoid a “skin”.
  8. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
  9. FOR CAKE: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  10. Grease and flour two 8″ round pans. Place parchment rounds on the bottom of each (optional).
  11. In a large bowl, using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter. Then add sugar and beat about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.
  12. Beat in the 3 eggs, one at a time.
  13. Stir in vanilla extract.
  14. Mix in about a 1/3rd of the flour mixture and 1/3 of the milk, using a spoon or spatula.
  15. Alternate until just combined.
  16. Divide batter between the two pans.
  17. Bake about 25 minutes, rotating pans around the 12 minute mark.
  18. Allow to cool on wire racks about 5 minutes before flipping out of pans to cool completely on wire racks.
  19. FOR LEMON BUTTERCREAM FROSTING: In a medium bowl, cream two sticks of butter using a hand or stand mixer.
  20. Sift in 1 lb of confectioners’ sugar.
  21. Add lemon juice, zest, and heavy cream.
  22. Beat on high speed until combined and fluffy.
  23. TO ASSEMBLE: With long, serrated knife, split each layer on half horizontally to create 4 layers.
  24. Place one of the bottom layers, cut side up, on board or serving plate.
  25. Spread with 1/2 lemon curd filling.
  26. Top with on of the top layers, cut side down, and spread with a thin layer of lemon buttercream frosting.
  27. Top with the other top layer, cut side up, and spread the remaining half of lemon curd filling on top.
  28. Finish with the remaining layer, cut side down.
  29. Use remaining lemon buttercream frosting to coat the top and sides of cake. Decorate as desired.
 

 


5 Comments »

  1. talia says:

    this cake was incredible. not only was it delicious, it also made me very popular that day; several colleagues came up for seconds (good thing i was so stingy…er…judicious, in my slicing). thanks for the very special birthday treat, @weeklycake!

  2. Sheina Ledesma says:

    I’m going to try this one out. I love lemon cake!

  3. Renee says:

    Oh yum…it looks really moist! My mouth is watering just looking at it!

  4. esther says:

    YUM! It looks delicious!

    I wonder if it will be even more extra extra amazing with meyer lemons? 🙂 YUMMM!

  5. Aunt Silly says:

    OhMyDear! *My* mouth is watering for your lemon cake, too! Lemon cake is one of my favorites!

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