In my family, I believe everyone deserves a homemade birthday cake. My father-in-law likes lemon cake and it's his birthday, so here goes to a new adventure involving lots of lemon. Lemon cake with lemon frosting.
Shaving for my zest to go in batter. I finally found a good use for this little grater, a kitchen item I find annoying with it's shape and size. I'll use it once a year now.
Why buy buttermilk when you can make your own....ironically with lemon juice.
My dry mix including the lemon zest.
Ready for oven. I alternatly added the buttermilk and flour mixture to the 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, beginning and ending with the flour mix. As I understand, this recipe can easily be over mixed, so there was no room for error.
Getting ready to candy the lemon slices.
Making syrup to brush baked cakes with. Also, this is when I candied the lemons. This process took 25 minutes.
After poking like 100 holes in the cakes, I brushed them with the syrup that I just made with lemon slices. Cakes were still hot here, so they cooled while soaking up the bitterly sweet syrup. A lemon lovers heaven!
Making real lemon frosting. This was honestly challenging. Not only did I have to pick a bowl to sacrifice just in case it cracked, I had to constantly mix and hold my mini temp reader until this mixture of egg whites, water, sugar, and a pinch of salt came to 150 degrees - on top of - not in - a pan of boiling water. Although I haven't cut into the cake yet, I feel maybe I have unleashed a deadly secret about this frosting. I did the exact same thing with German Chocolate Cake frosting - I took it off the heat to early and in turn ended up with seperated frosting. So I used the syrup to drench the cake with, made another batch the right way and the cake alone was to die for. I did the same thing here, we'll see what reaction I get from people when they eat this. Who knew there was frosting made by forming stiff peaks.
After the cake was frosted, still wrapping my brain around the type of "frosting" this was, there is still seperation occuring with both batches. Again, I'm no fan of lemon, but I was pleasantly surprised with the taste and texture of this lemon "fluff".
Cake frosted...I had to use a spoon to frost it, a knife was useless.
Taa Daa! Topped with candied lemons and ready to be eatin'. I'll let you know how this turned out. I spent a total of 2 1/2 hours start to finish with this cake.
Shaving for my zest to go in batter. I finally found a good use for this little grater, a kitchen item I find annoying with it's shape and size. I'll use it once a year now.
Why buy buttermilk when you can make your own....ironically with lemon juice.
My dry mix including the lemon zest.
Ready for oven. I alternatly added the buttermilk and flour mixture to the 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, beginning and ending with the flour mix. As I understand, this recipe can easily be over mixed, so there was no room for error.
Getting ready to candy the lemon slices.
Making syrup to brush baked cakes with. Also, this is when I candied the lemons. This process took 25 minutes.
After poking like 100 holes in the cakes, I brushed them with the syrup that I just made with lemon slices. Cakes were still hot here, so they cooled while soaking up the bitterly sweet syrup. A lemon lovers heaven!
Making real lemon frosting. This was honestly challenging. Not only did I have to pick a bowl to sacrifice just in case it cracked, I had to constantly mix and hold my mini temp reader until this mixture of egg whites, water, sugar, and a pinch of salt came to 150 degrees - on top of - not in - a pan of boiling water. Although I haven't cut into the cake yet, I feel maybe I have unleashed a deadly secret about this frosting. I did the exact same thing with German Chocolate Cake frosting - I took it off the heat to early and in turn ended up with seperated frosting. So I used the syrup to drench the cake with, made another batch the right way and the cake alone was to die for. I did the same thing here, we'll see what reaction I get from people when they eat this. Who knew there was frosting made by forming stiff peaks.
After the cake was frosted, still wrapping my brain around the type of "frosting" this was, there is still seperation occuring with both batches. Again, I'm no fan of lemon, but I was pleasantly surprised with the taste and texture of this lemon "fluff".
Cake frosted...I had to use a spoon to frost it, a knife was useless.
Taa Daa! Topped with candied lemons and ready to be eatin'. I'll let you know how this turned out. I spent a total of 2 1/2 hours start to finish with this cake.
I can just smell it! Every scratch cake I have ever made has failed miserably. Kudos to you!
ReplyDeleteI've some serious disasters though.
ReplyDelete